The U.S. Federal Reserve is unlikely to lower its benchmark rate below zero, JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said.
“In the United States, I don’t think it’s in the cards,” Dimon said Thursday in an interview on CNBC. “If I was in the central bank, I would be working with the policy makers on the fiscal side, saying we need joint, coordinated, intelligent policy.”
Central banks in the euro zone, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and Japan have all pushed some key interest rates negative in recent years to stimulate growth and inflation. Policy makers in the U.S. lifted their benchmark rate in December after leaving it near zero for seven years.
“Overseas, I don’t think it’s going to work that well,” Dimon said. “I think it’s going to have a lot of unintended consequences that we don’t understand and you guys will be writing books for 50 years on it — what we could have done, should have done, might have done, and what we learned.”
Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said this week in an interview with Bloomberg Television that negative interest rates, if pursued for an extended period of time, would eventually distort saving and investment.
© Copyright 2023 Bloomberg News. All rights reserved.