Kamala Harris once went head-to-head with Jamie Dimon over a California homeowners settlement. And it paid off.

“We were like two dogs in a fight,” Harris recalled in her 2019 autobiography, Truths We Believe: An American Journey.

The two sides were sparring over a proposed settlement that Wall Street’s biggest banks were negotiating with a consortium of state attorneys general to ease the burden on homeowners whose properties were foreclosed on during the Great Depression. The banks, including Wells Fargo, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, among others, had offered between $2 billion and $4 billion in compensation to California alone. Harris deemed that inadequate, and the banks eventually raised their offer nearly tenfold.

“During the mortgage crisis, I took on the big banks on Wall Street and won $20 billion for California families,” Harris said during her campaign speech on Monday, referring to the achievement.

In her book, Harris details the pivotal, if tense, conversation with Dimon in greater detail. Frustrated that she was making little progress with JPMorgan’s general counsel, Harris opted to call Dimon—one of the most respected CEOs on Wall Street—directly, according to her autobiography. As Harris recounts, the two were on the phone within 10 seconds, tempers boiling.

“You are trying to steal from my shareholders,” [Dimon] “Harris screamed as soon as he heard my voice,” Harris wrote indignantly. “Your shareholders? My shareholders are the homeowners in California. Come see them. Talk to them about who got robbed.”

The conversation remained heated before Dimon told Harris he would discuss it with his board. Two weeks later, Harris said, the banks raised their offer nearly tenfold, offering California a deal that would ultimately save homeowners $20 billion.

“I’ll never know what happened on the Dimon side,” Harris said. “But I do know that the banks gave up after two weeks.”

Harris and corporate America get to know each other again

More than a decade later, California is the epicenter of the nation’s housing crisis, and Harris is the current vice president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. She received President Joe Biden’s endorsement on Sunday, after announcing that he would not seek a second term. California’s housing crisis was brewing long before the Great Depression, but since then, construction has declined everywhere; Housing prices And Rentals Well above national averages, it has Largest number of homeless people in the countryBut for Harris, the ordeal shows how she has come up with a solution to the housing market, one of the most vexing issues in the country and in the state with the most acute form of it, no less. It’s also a testament to her approach to working with the corporate world, albeit controversial in this case.

Since her explosive phone call with Damon in 2011, the two have made attempts to build a fruitful relationship. I had lunch At the White House in March, as first reported by Financial Times. At the time, the Biden administration’s relationship with corporate America was strained. The president had called for higher corporate taxes and taken a very tough stance on antitrust regulations. In the past, Harris had been friendlier to corporate America than other Democratic politicians, once referring to Google as her “family.” In recent weeks, there have been reports that she Courting CEOshoping they can shy From Trump Unconventional Economic and trade policies.

Harris has also leaned on top executives when she feels they can help her achieve her political goals. For example, in 2021, when the Biden administration was distributing pandemic relief loans, They are called CEOs of major banks.including Dimon, to see if they can get it to low-income borrowers faster, according to Bloomberg.

But as the homeowner’s settlement proved, it doesn’t take kindly to big business when it comes to law enforcement, though. Los Angeles Times I did once Suggest Her handling of the settlement was not ideal because the bankers evaded criminal charges.

From $4 billion to $20 billion

It was risky lending practices that fueled the subprime mortgage crisis, which then led to what we know today as the Great Financial Crisis. Real estate foreclosures have increased dramatically. In 2008, more than 861,000 families lost their homes, CNN reported at the time. That same year, more than 236,000 homes were lost to foreclosure in California alone. according to the Los Angeles Times.

The settlement Harris was negotiating was intended to provide much-needed relief to homeowners hurt by the crisis. At one point during the negotiations, Harris abandoned settlement talks altogether, frustrated by the low offer from the banks. The move paid off when she eventually negotiated a separate settlement for California; in 2012, the banks provided the state with $18.4 billion in debt relief and $2 billion in other financial assistance.

“This outcome is the result of insisting that California get a fair deal that is proportionate to the harm that has been done here,” Harris said at the time, according to a press release. launch Since settlement day, “we have insisted on relief for California homeowners, enforced the law so homeowners see a benefit that allows them to stay in their homes, and maintained our ability to investigate bank crimes and predatory lending.”

Under these terms, homeowners could either lower their mortgage payments or sell their homes for less than they owed the bank, forcing the banks to take losses. Far more Californians chose the latter option, which was unexpected. Critics say This project did not live up to the spirit of the settlement, which was intended to help people stay in their homes rather than sell them. In 2016, interview With the Los Angeles Times, Harris said the unexpected result was the result of the overall economic hardship caused by the housing crisis.

“There were a lot of homeowners who didn’t want to take on the burden of debt because they had also lost their jobs,” she said.