Donald Trump, Jamie Dimon And The “Will He, Won’t He” Over Treasury Secretary

Will JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon be the next Secretary of the Treasury?

Depends very much on who one is asking this AM.

The team over at Fox News Business   certainly thinks it is a live option.  The official report out of FNB is that conversations remain ongoing — though Maria Bartiromo was tweeting as of yesterday that it was pretty much a done deal.

“Hearing @jpmorgan ceo jamie Dimon will get treasury secy job. Big meeting tomorrow” was the 3:30 tweet.

As of 4:30 though, the done deal position had been walked back some.

“Down to jamie (sic.)Dimon & Steve Mnuchin. will be decided tmrw for Friday announcement…they’ve now shut down info.”

However, for all of the certainty and definitely/maybe talk over at Fox, the team at Fortune is also sure — but of a different outcome.  Their reporting this morning indicates “Jamie Dimon, CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase has formally told the Trump transition team that he has no interest in being the next Treasury Secretary of the United States.”

Granted, that was also the report as of this weekend — Dimon had turned down the Trump team as he does not feel “suited” to the role of top dog at Treasury and has a long standing position of not being evenly remotely interest in giving up is private sector work to instead go and work for the government.

These reports also indicate that Dimon has offered to be a senior economic adviser to the Trump administration — but that he will do so from his current position as the CEO of the largest bank in the nation as measured by market cap and assets.

Then there is team Reuters, which — as of this morning — is splitting the difference, reporting that Dimon may or may not be in the running for the Treasury job as of today. Their issue seems to be dueling reports from different insiders. A Trump transition team source told Reuters that Dimon is “pitching hard” for the Treasury role, while a different source told the news wires that Dimon was definitely not interested in the job. Both spoke on condition of anonymity.

It is also an open question as to how directly Trump is courting Dimon, since many analysts have noted that even though Dimon may not want to be the head of Treasury, it is rare that for people to say “no” to cabinet jobs when they are offered directly.

However Trump or Dimon feel about the issue — it is clear that JPMC’s stockholders are less than thrilled at the prospect of the long-time CEO running off to join the circus in Washington. The bank’s stock took a 2.5 percent hit on the rumor that Dimon might be the next Treasury Secretary.