Up until Wednesday, Jamie Dimon had had a bad week. While the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase was busy hobnobbing with corporate and government leaders in China, students at Syracuse University opposed the decision to pick him as graduation day speaker.
As students demanded a speaker more “sensitive to the current global climate”, eschewing careers advice from an executive in a discredited industry, Kerry Killinger was conducting his own demolition job in Washington. In testimony to a committee, the former chief executive of Washington Mutual attacked US regulators for selling the failed lender to JPMorgan at “a bargain price” of $1.9bn at the height of the crisis two years ago. Mr Killinger claimed WaMu had been sold cheaply as it was outside the inner circle of Wall Street titans and government officials who played God with the US financial system. (“I am unaware of any club,” was Mr Dimon's terse response a couple of days later.)
The attacks underlined the dangers that can come with being at the top of the financial heap. Mr Dimon is one of the few bank executives to have emerged from the crisis well, steering JPMorgan away from the disastrous investments that dragged down other banks.