JPMorgan's CEO just sent a memo to anyone watching the U.S. economy

JPMorgan Chase recently delivered another big quarter. The bank earned $15.3 billion, or $5.57 a share, in the third quarter, though the results fell short of Wall Street's estimates in a rare miss, CNBC reported .

Revenue still climbed 8% from a year earlier.

Yet the more telling part of the report sat beneath the profit. Jamie Dimon used it to flag a short list of risks building under a still-strong economy.

In an interview days later, he described the U.S. economy as booming, while warning that inflationary events could still push prices higher.

The 5 economic threats JPMorgan is watching

Dimon named them in one sentence: large fiscal deficits, sticky inflation, elevated asset prices, rising interest rates, and geopolitical conditions "continue to shift under the surface," he said, according to JPMorgan's earnings release .

These forces may be manageable, he added, but the bank remains prepared for a wide range of outcomes.

Washington's borrowing tops the list. The federal government closed fiscal 2026 with a deficit of about $1.99 trillion, which was $217 billion wider than the year before. The debt pile hasn't stopped growing either, reaching roughly $40.39 trillion on Oct. 15.

Inflation and interest rates are tangled together. In May, a spike in crude oil sent the Consumer Price Index to 4.2%, its highest reading in three years, CBS News reported .

The Fed answered in September by raising rates for the first time since 2023 and hinted that another hike could come this year. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh said plainly that inflation had stayed too high for too long.

The last two threats are harder to measure. Dimon has pointed to the remilitarization of the world and the restructuring of trade as forces that could raise prices, and inflation has risen during the Iran conflict.

On the earnings call, he also acknowledged that times are good, with high asset prices and fairly low credit losses. Elevated valuations leave less room for error if any of the other four threats flare up.

How America's biggest banks are protecting themselves

On the balance sheet, JPMorgan is padding its cushion. It set aside $2.7 billion for credit losses during the quarter, and $539 million of that went into reserves, mostly for wholesale loans.

The bank also pulled back on share buybacks. Actual losses are still in check, though, since net charge-offs came in lower than a year ago.

Dimon is also getting pickier about who gets a loan. "We are tightening up a little bit credit," he told analysts , adding that some credit terms have become a little looser. In plain terms, the bank is being more careful about the loans it makes.