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Chase doesn’t get why customers aren’t saving money. Elizabeth Warren has an answer.

The 2020 candidate shot back at the now-deleted advice from the big bank that got a big bailout
Chase doesn’t get why customers aren’t saving money. Elizabeth Warren has an answer.

Chase — as in JPMorgan Chase — just doesn’t get why Americans aren’t saving money! But plenty of Americans, including Elizabeth Warren, have some ideas.

In a widely ridiculed, now-deleted tweet, the official Chase account offered some advice (coupled with the hashtag #MondayMotivation) for Americans trying to build a savings account: Just stop taking cabs, eating out, and buying to-go coffee.

The tweet went like this:

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“You: why is my balance so low?
Bank account: make coffee at home
Bank account: eat the food that’s already in the fridge
Bank account: you don’t need a cab, it’s only three blocks
You: I guess we’ll never know
Bank account: seriously?

MondayMotivation”

Never mind that 4 in 10 adults can’t even cover an emergency $400 expense, according to a 2016 report from the Federal Reserve. And never mind that the U.S. finished 19th for three consecutive years in a global analysis of retirement fund security. It’s your iced coffee that’s draining your savings account!

Numerous Twitter users pointed out that Chase’s tweet was deeply simplifying the problems Americans face while trying to save money. And many of them also blasted JPMorgan Chase itself for receiving a $25 billion bailout package from the government during the 2008 financial crisis. Maybe Chase should have just cut back on the cab rides?

One prominent Twitter user, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, offered Chase some advice of her own, saying that wages are stagnating in the U.S. while the cost of living goes up as employers “don’t pay living wages.”

The 2020 candidate for president is one of the most public and dogged foes of the financial industry. In 2015, for example, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said Warren simply didn’t understand the banking system.

Warren, who was instrumental in the founding of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, responded that they were afraid of her.

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“The problem is not that I don’t understand the global banking system,” Warren said to HuffPost. “The problem for these guys is that I fully understand the system and I understand how they make their money. And that's what they don't like about me.”

In a recent New York Magazine piece about Wall Street Democrats, Warren was singled out as the Wall Street boogeyman.

“She would torture them,” one banker told the magazine.

“Warren strikes fear in their hearts,” said another.

Chase quietly deleted its Tweet on Monday afternoon and said its own #MondayMotivation was to get better at tweeting.

Cover: Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., speaks at a Service Employees International Union forum on labor issues, Saturday, April 27, 2019, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)