Jamie Dimon says US, world headed for recession in 2023: ‘This is serious stuff’

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is predicting that the US and the global economy will be plunged into a recession by the middle of 2023 due to what he calls a “very, very serious” combination of headwinds, including inflation, high interest rates and the Russian war in Ukraine.

“These are very, very serious things which I think are likely to push the US and the world — I mean, Europe is already in recession — and they’re likely to put the US in some kind of recession six to nine months from now,” Dimon told CNBC.

Dimon, who spoke to CNBC’s Julianna Tatelbaum at Monday’s JPM Techstars conference in London, said he thought the US economy was “actually still doing well” despite the challenges of the present day.

He also predicted that American consumers would fare better than they did in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis, which saw the economy get hammered by a wave of housing foreclosures as well as mass layoffs.

“But you can’t talk about the economy without talking about stuff in the future — and this is serious stuff,” said Dimon, who heads the largest bank in the US.

Dimon criticized the Federal Reserve, saying it “waited too long and did too little” in hiking interest rates in hopes of taming runaway levels of inflation not seen in four decades.

The JPMorgan chief said that the central bank was “clearly catching up.”

“From here we let’s all wish [Fed Chair Jerome Powell] success and keep our fingers crossed that they managed to slow down the economy enough so that whatever it is, is mild — and it is possible,” he said.

Dimon said he was unsure as to how long a recession would last.

“It can go from very mild to quite hard and a lot will be reliant on what happens with this war,” he said.

“So, I think to guess is hard, be prepared.”

He also predicted that the S&P 500 could drop by “another easy 20%” and that “the next 20% would be much more painful than the first.”

Last month, billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, the CEO of Citadel, predicted that a recession was inevitable.

“Everybody likes to forecast recessions, and there will be one,” Griffin told CNBC’s Delivering Alpha conference. “It’s just a question of when, and frankly, how hard.”

Griffin added: “Is it possible end of ’23 we have a hard landing? Absolutely.”

The US has experienced two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, which technically meets the definition of a recession.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced Friday that American companies added 263,000 new jobs last month while the unemployment rate ticked down further to 3.5%.

That has economists worried that the Federal Reserve will further raise interest rates — increasing the risk of a deeper recession.