Jamie Dimon flew to the UK to lobby the British government ahead of its Autumn Budget. He brought other bankers with him. They want to make sure the new leadership doesn't do anything that costs them money.
This is what bankers do. They make billions. Then they hear a government might raise taxes or add regulations. Then they book flights and explain why that would destroy civilization.
The newly minted leadership is Labour. Labour won by promising to fix everything the last guys broke. Fixing things costs money. Bankers would prefer the money not come from bankers.
Dimon runs JPMorgan Chase. JPMorgan Chase made $49.6 billion in profit last year. But if the UK raises taxes on financial services by two percent, the entire London banking sector will collapse into the Thames. This is what they'll say in the meeting. They'll have PowerPoint slides.
The Autumn Budget is critical because it's the first one under the new government. Every budget is critical. Bankers call every budget critical. If they called it "a budget where some numbers change slightly," nobody would take their meeting.
Retail traders will read this headline and think it means something. They'll check the pound. They'll check UK bank stocks. They'll draw lines on charts connecting Jamie Dimon's flight path to resistance levels. Then they'll lose money for completely unrelated reasons and blame American bankers lobbying a foreign government about a budget that won't pass for six weeks.
The funniest part is thinking any of this matters. Bankers lobby. Governments do what they want. Markets go up or down based on nothing. Your technical indicators don't care that Jamie Dimon had a sandwich at Heathrow.
Photo by Alicja Ziajowska on Unsplash
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