How A Heated Phone Call Between Kamala Harris And JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon May Have Impacted Housing Relief

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, as millions of Americans faced foreclosure, an unexpected confrontation between then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon set the stage for a shift in homeowner relief efforts.

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The encounter, described by Harris in her 2019 autobiography “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey,” began as an impromptu phone call and quickly escalated into what she termed “two dogs in a fight.” According to Fortune, which originally reported on the phone call, the issue was a proposed settlement between major Wall Street banks and state attorneys general to compensate homeowners affected by the foreclosure crisis.

According to Harris’s account, Dimon accused her of trying to “steal from my shareholders” almost immediately after picking up the phone. Harris fired back: “Your shareholders? My shareholders are the homeowners of California. You come and see them. Talk to them about who got robbed.”

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The heated exchange, while brief, appears to have been a turning point. Harris said that two weeks after the call, the banks increased their offer from $2 billion to $4 billion for California, ultimately resulting in $20 billion in homeowner relief.

“I’ll never know what happened on Dimon’s side,” Harris noted in her book. “But I do know two weeks later the banks gave in.”

The settlement, finalized in 2012, provided $18.4 billion in relief and $2 billion in other assistance to California homeowners. It was a victory for Harris, who had earlier walked away from multistate settlement talks, frustrated by what she saw as bad bank offers.

“This outcome is the result of an insistence that California receives a fair deal commensurate with the harm done here,” Harris said.

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However, the implementation of the settlement wasn’t without criticism. Many Californians opted to sell their homes for less than they owed rather than lowering their mortgage payments. Some argue that this outcome didn’t align with the settlement’s primary goal of keeping people in their homes.

Harris, in a 2016 interview with the Los Angeles Times, attributed that to the broader economic hardships caused by the housing crisis. “There was a large number of homeowners who just didn’t want to have the burden of the debt because they had also lost their jobs,” she explained.

The confrontation with Dimon and the resulting settlement point to Harris’s approach to corporate accountability, a trait that could be important as she becomes the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

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Harris and Dimon’s relationship has evolved since their contentious 2011 phone call. Fortune reported that the two had lunch at the White House in March last year, when the Biden administration’s relationship with corporate America was strained.

As Harris campaigns for the presidency, her history of taking on Wall Street could be powerful. However, she’ll need to balance it with her recent efforts to court CEO support, particularly as she positions herself against former President Donald Trump’s economic policies.

It’s worth noting that Trump recently dismissed rumors that Dimon was being considered for Treasury Secretary in a potential second Trump administration, saying he had no idea where the speculation originated.

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