At a House Financial Services Committee hearing Wednesday, freshman Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) grilled JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on how a JPMorgan employee named Patricia who earns $16.50 an hour — or $35,070 a year — should manage her family's budget. On Thursday, Porter told CNN that the job and the numbers were real but "Patricia" was a composite of a lot of her constituents. "There are thousands and thousands, and tens of thousands of Patricias out there," Porter said.
This Patricia has one 6-year-old daughter, with whom she shares a one-bedroom apartment in Irvine, California. After accounting for bare-bones living expenses, Porter calculated, Patricia was $567 in the hole at the end of each month.
"How should she manage this budget shortfall while she's working full-time at your bank?" Porter asked Dimon. Learning this was a starting position, Dimon said, "You can get those jobs out of high school, and she may have my job one day." "She may, but Mr. Dimon, she doesn't have the ability right now to spend your $31 million," Porter shot back. When pressed for his advice on what Patricia should do, Dimon repeated, "I don't know, I'd have to think about that." Porter said she appreciated his "desire to be helpful, but what I'd like you to do is provide a way for families to make ends meet."
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Porter was focusing on income inequality in her grilling of a Wall Street chieftain, but on Thursday's Daily Show, Desi Lydic focused on another Wall Street problem: "Bro culture" and its paranoid, woman-quashing reaction to #MeToo. You can watch that below. Peter Weber
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