Jamie Dimon on the Economy, U.S.-China, Overseas Wars and More: Full Interview | WSJ

Jamie Dimon on the Economy, U.S.-China, Overseas Wars and More: Full Interview | WSJ

– Jamie Dimon, thank you
very much for sitting down
with us today.
I spent a lot of time this
weekend reading your letter
and my biggest takeaway
from it was that you have
a very clear sense of
what’s good for America,
what’s good for the economy,
and what’s good for J.P. Morgan.
What is the biggest threat in your mind to
that confident vision?
– So every year when I write
that letter, I try to think of
what are the most important
things, and I would add to that
the free Western world,
’cause that’s what worries me
the most is that, you
know the Ukraine War,
the terrorist activities in
Israel, you know the thread that
that’s drawing between Russia,
Iran, North Korea, China,
the difficulties of our age with China,
that whole thing is challenging.
But you know, we would call the free
Democratic Western world and that to me is
the most important thing that
we get all of that right.
– Well, I wanna come back to
the geopolitical backdrop in a
minute, but right now I
want to focus specifically
on the economy.
– Right?
– As the chief exec of
America’s biggest bank,
you have an unrivaled insight
into the financial health
of the US consumer.
What are people doing with
their money right now?
– So you have to look at
a little bit of context.
The consumer’s in pretty
good shape right now.
Unemployment’s under 4% has
been there for two years.
They still have excess money from Covid.
If you go back to looking
at the amount of money
that was spent during
Covid, it was $6 trillion
that basically went
into consumer’s pockets
through various means
and various programs,
they’re still spending it down.
If you look at the bottom 50% of income,
they pretty much spent the excess.
So the kind of back to where they were,
the top 50% still is excess,
housing prices are up,
stock prices are up, jobs
are plentiful, wages are fine
going up at the low end, the
consumer’s in pretty good
shape because of that businesses
are in pretty good shape
too, because people
spend, it creates profits.
The one thing you gotta be cautious about,
a lot of it’s driven by
just fiscal spending.
– Mm-mm.
– So even today, the deficit
of 6% of GDP, you know,
almost $2 trillion, that’s
driving a lot of this growth.
And that will have other
consequences possibly down the
road, you know, called inflation,
which may not go away like people expect.
So when I look at the range of
possible outcomes, you know,
you can have that soft landing,
I’m a little more worried
that it may not be so
soft and inflation may not
quite go away.
People expect, I’m not
talking about just this year,
I’m talking about 25 and 26.
The rates may have to
go up a little higher.
I’m talking about the 10 year
rate, the five year rate,
and you know that we can have
consequences, so we’ll see.
– But right now you describe
a pretty rosy picture
and yet we know consumers
aren’t feeling it.
Why this disconnect?
– Yeah.
Well you have to look at
different consumers here.
So the bottom 20% of America
have not done particularly
well over the last 20 years,
incomes barely went up.
They’re actually starting
to go for the first time
in almost 20 years.
Remember suicide,
fentanyl, crime, inflation,
there are a lot of negative effects.
Some people can’t get,
mortgages can’t buy the home.
Their jobs are still paying.
You know, I think 25% of
the jobs in America pay $15
an hour or less.
So yeah, there’s part of society
who’s kind of struggling,
there’s part of society
who’s not and I think that’s
a different issue about how
we deal with the policy.
But you know, you can see
why that has people upset.
And then you see a whole
bunch of other things that,
you know, people look in the world,
they’re worried about geopolitics,
they’re worried about politics,
they’re worry about polarization.
So you have a disconnect
about, about, you know, economy
and as you said, confidence levels.
– So just to go back to the
soft landing in the letter you
concede you were on the hawkish side,
but then things played out
in a more benign fashion.
But you are still, it’s a
slightly begrudging concession.
You yourself sound quite
glum in the letter.
– Yeah.
– Can you tell us a bit
more about why that is?
– Yeah, so I’m not looking at a year
and I’m not making a
forecast, I’m trying to say
what are the range of possible outcomes?
And last year and this
year, I would put out
the same issues.
Huge amount of fiscal
deficit, huge amount of QE,
we don’t really fully
know the consequences yet,
part of it might be inflation.
A lot of things in the
future. Inflationary,
the green economy
militarization of the world,
obviously the deficits, which you know,
basically aren’t gonna go away
as far as the eye can see.
And so it puts me in this
on the, and geopolitics
all that puts me on the side of caution
that things may not go
as well as people expect.
Again, that’s not a 24
forecast, I’m cautious.
So I think I said in my letter,
the odds of a soft landing,
the market kind of prices in
70%, I think it’s half of that.
And so therefore the odds of
something different, you know,
is 65%, et cetera.
And so, you know we’ll see.
But I don’t really know, you
know, as a business person,
I try to be prepared for all of that,
it’s just a little cautious,
it looks a little bit more
like the seventies to me.
And I point out to a lot of people,
things look pretty rosy in 1972,
they were not rosy in 1973.
So don’t get lulled into
a false sense of security,
’cause the today looks okay,
that tomorrow’s gonna be okay,
so just trying to separate the two.
– Sticking with today
then, is Bidenomics working
– Partially?
You know, when you spend
that kind of money,
you’re gonna have growth.
And you know, I think if you
look at binomics you do have
parts of it where we needed some of it,
like some of the industrial policy,
I think the infrastructure
thing is terrific,
that was bipartisan.
You know, other things
will remain to be seen.
So, and I think some of the
American public looks at
it like, what are they getting?
– Mm-mm.
So if you go to rural
America or inner cities,
I’m not sure they feel like
they’re being lifted up
by this economy.
– Do you think Jerome
Powell’s doing a good job
as chairman of the Fed?
– I have tremendous respect
for Jay, I think the Fed
was probably late in raising rates.
They caught up, they’re
probably wait, right?
And watching right now, we
don’t know what’s gonna happen,
you might as well wait.
It’s very hard to forecast
the future, I’ve always told
the Fed they should stop forecasting.
I mean, obviously the data
dependent, you know when someone
makes a statement, you
know we’re data dependent.
They say "No matter what the
data says we want it anyway."
Well they can’t, so they
should wait and see.
But you know, they may have
to get a little bit tougher
and we also don’t know
the full effect of QE.
Again, I’m a little more on
the cautious side of that.
You know, most people
have a general feeling
that you can reduce the balance
sheet by several trillion
dollars and its effect will not be felt.
I’m not so sure we’ve never had it before.
So it’s never really been tested.
And the one time they
started doing reversing QE
at one point it did
cause some ramification
in the marketplace, I
kind of expect that again.
– So if we go back a year,
J.P. Morgan helped out
with the mini banking crisis.
Wasn’t the first time you’d
stepped in at a moment like this
because in 2008 of course
you bought Bear Stearns
and Washington Mutual.
How did the experience, the
2008 experience help shape
your approach to last
year’s banking crisis?
It didn’t at all.
I mean, that was, 08 was a real crisis,
Bear Stearns was a much more complicated
and so was WAMU within this one.
This was much simpler, we
thought it was the last domino
because only a handful of
banks had the same problems
of concentrated deposits, too
much interest rate exposure,
et cetera.
And so I said it was the
last domino provided rates
don’t go up and there’s
not a major recession,
’cause if that happens, obviously
it’ll affect banks again,
so it was a completely different thing.
We wouldn’t have done it if it didn’t
help stabilize the system,
we would not have done it
just for ourselves.
I point out in the letter,
’cause people always look at
just the financial side
of that, but in reality,
10,000 people on day
one who were working on
future looking projects,
went to do backward looking
projects to consolidate 165
systems, rules, procedures,
et cetera.
Though it was a simpler bank
and part of the earnings
was just using our own capital liquidity.
I tell people, you don’t have
to buy a company, you know,
and thousands of people
when you can just buy
assets to do the same thing.
So part of it had nothing
to do with First Republic.
So the financial results are nice,
but we would try to be honest
about where they come from.
– So how’s the integration
going then with the platform?
– Good, it’s doing great.
You know, it’s obviously
always hard and complex.
Most, it would be done by the end of May,
so you might see some customer complaints
because when you do the big
complex consolidation systems,
obviously certain things can
go wrong and at a minimum
some small things go wrong,
so by the end of the year
it’ll be completely done.
– Switching tack now to geopolitics,
we’ve got wars going on in the Middle East
and in Europe that
create an enormous amount
of economic uncertainty, if we focus first
on the Middle East.
Do you think that the US
position towards the Israel-Hamas
war is the right one?
– I think Israel has the
right to defend itself,
I think war is a terrible thing.
I think people have to be
honest about what war is,
you know, and when they
look at these civilian
deaths and all the things like that,
so I don’t know the
specifics in the military.
I think the notion that they aren’t gonna
defend themselves is wrong.
So I’ll leave the military
experts decide, you know,
what’s the right way to go do that?
Every general I see on TV,
and I’ve spoken to several, you know,
city conflict is really bad.
– Mm-mm.
– And you know it’s door
by door, higher amount
of civilian casualties, you
know Hamas must have known
there was gonna be quite a
reaction to what they did.
By the way it’s unjustifiable
for any reason ever.
so I wanna be clear about that.
– And then we’ve got a war
in Ukraine as well where,
you know, Ukraine clearly
struggling against Russia.
What would it mean for
the global economy if
Russia was to win?
– It could be, again, I’m
gonna put odds in this,
it could be a potential disaster
because you know this is
the first war in Europe,
free democratic nation invaded by two
or 300,000 Russian
soldiers under the threat
of nuclear blackmail.
So, you know, we’ve never
had nuclear blackmail before,
which is also teaching the whole world.
You know, maybe having a nuclear
weapons pretty good thing
because people will be afraid of union.
You can, you know abuse a
neighbor if you feel like it,
it would be on the border of NATO.
You know, obviously NATO
is re-arming right now,
but the other thing is
affecting all alliances.
So all military alliances,
all global economic alliances.
The nexus of Iran, North Korea,
and China makes it very hard, in my view,
for the Chinese American relationship
because we’re kind of on
different sides of that.
They say they’re neutral,
whether they’re helping
or not, we are clearly not neutral.
If Russia wins, I personally,
you might see a lot
of people deciding that, you
know will America stand up
for Europe?
Can you rely on them?
And if you can’t rely on
them, what are you gonna do?
And that includes economically,
so that’s why I kind of
talk about the economic
battlefield and the battlefield.
So economically, every nation should say
what makes me secure, what
makes me secure in energy, food,
and all the things I need.
So I’m a little worried that
if Russia wins that war,
you’re gonna see kind of the world kind of
enter a little bit of chaos
as people realign alliances
and economic relationships, et cetera.
The tell thing is, is after
World War II, the Bretton Woods,
the Marshall Plan, the
rebuild of NATO, WTO,
all these structures are put
in place that actually led
to a very safe, secure
world, tax Americana
lifted billions of people outta
poverty and basically peace.
There are a lot of small wars,
but basically peace among
all the major powers.
You know, if that’s torn
a sunder, who knows what
it’s gonna be replaced with.
– Well, I thought that was
a very interesting part
of your letter where you’re
talking about the need
for this new global architecture
and it’s the kind of
big thinking that, you
know we don’t often hear
from world leaders.
Can you tell us a bit more about what
that architecture might look like?
Give us an example of
what you’re talking about.
– Yeah, so I’m not sure it
has to be so new, just we have
to go back and see what
worked and what didn’t work.
But I look at the Western
world, economic alliances
should be kept together and
we need to help the rest
of the world.
So, you know Bob Gates writes in his book,
"A Symphony of Power" that we’ve overused
and maybe misused our military muscle.
We’ve underused economic, intelligence,
development, finance, diplomacy,
all these other things.
So, you know we need American leadership.
It should be done with our allies.
It can’t be done, you know
our way or the highway,
it can’t be done.
You know, America’s known to,
you know if it takes advantage
of a situation, which we
don’t normally, but together,
trade development, finance,
helping the nations,
and then, you know,
reforming these agencies,
which clearly some don’t work.
And you can debate any which one you want,
but, so you know to get trade
right, we need to negotiate.
I would reenter the TPP.
I think our government’s gonna
start talking about trade.
I remind them we have
trade with these nations.
So when they say we can’t talk trade,
well you already have it.
Why can’t you talk about making it better?
And of course, the TPP would
be a geo strategic home run,
economically great, geo
strategically great,
our allies will love it and
bring everyone closer together.
And then you can also negotiate with China
from a better position of strength.
So you’re not trying to
keep it out of everything,
you just wanna set it up
in a way you think works
for the free and democratic world
and it looks like a lot of these
folks would like to destroy
that and so we should do
everything we can to
stop that from happening.
– So China’s complicated, obviously,
because on the one hand we
have so much trade with China,
the supply chains are integrated.
But at the same time, we reported recently
that China is aiding
the Russian War effort
and there’s now a proposal by the US
to sanction Chinese banks.
What do you think of
that approach to China?
How should the US approach China?
– You know, I would tell
America, take a deep breath.
We have all the foodborne
energy we need, the Atlantic
and the Pacific, no wars in
North America, South America.
The gifts of the founding
follows the power of freedom,
which I write about in
there, which is extraordinary
in terms of people, ideas, innovation,
entrepreneurship, 80,000 per person GDP,
China imports 11 million
barrels of oil a day.
Their very complicated
neighbor, their own actions
are causing all their neighbors to re-arm,
Philippines, Japan, Korea,
Indonesia, Vietnam, India.
Not because of America,
that’s their own actions,
they’re scaring their neighbors.
Their GDP per person is $15,000
versus our 80, you know,
they have had good innovation,
which, you know God bless them.
And they rely on 11 million
barrels of oil a day,
I believe half which
go through the Red Sea
or the Traits of Hormuz, which are guarded
by American warships.
So, you know we’re in
a very good position.
We have to restructure trade
around national security,
kind of a no-brainer, like
how we got there, who knows,
don’t like to cry, but spilled milk.
But anything that we need
for rare earth for F35s,
you know the ingredients
for pharmaceuticals,
semiconductor, you know
important semiconductors
and related where it might be
used for military purposes,
you could put AI in there and
lithium and some other things.
Obviously we should
resource friendly source
or something like that.
I would engage with China, I would have
very tough conversation about
what we’re willing to do,
what we’re not willing to do.
I would do it with our allies in mind.
Not, you know, America our way
or the highway type of thing.
So when we did the IRA
act, I’m not against it,
but it clearly was by America
for America of America
and it really irritated a lot of them.
– Mm-mm.
– And I don’t want to tear us under the
economic relationships
either, so we should
be very thoughtful, they need oil and gas.
So the L&G I think is very
important to you strategically.
So I would negotiate
them around all of that
and I’m glad they’re doing it.
So if you listen to Tony
Blinken and Jake Sullivan,
Janet Young, they’re starting
to engage and they should,
and they should be quite
clear what we need,
what we want, and we
should listen to them.
You know, they may have
some legitimate issues
and legitimate complaints
and do it as best we can.
As long as Ukraine is there
and they’re doing anything
to aid a bet, I think
it makes it very hard
to have a great relationship with them.
And I think you know, that
this thing in Ukraine is real.
And you know, I don’t
know what exactly I saw
some of these reports.
I’m glad the government has the authority
to do certain things if in
fact some of these things
are true.
Yeah, they should do some sanctions.
– Right?
– But they should expect
some impact, by the way.
– I want to turn now to domestic matters
and the forthcoming election.
We’re in the very unusual
position of knowing
what a Trump presidency looks like,
we know what a Biden
presidency looks like.
Who’s the best candidate
for the economy for 2024?
– Okay, I’m not gonna go into
that kind of thing right now.
And whoever is president, you
know, we will try to help.
I really would hope that
whoever’s president tries
to reach out to the other side.
You know, that Trump would put some
Democrats in his cabinet,
maybe Biden would put some
Republicans in the cabinet.
I would like them to put a
lot of experts around them.
Not just academic, but
you know practitioners
in the real world,
because I think it matters
and to get policies right
that are good for both America
and the world and that’s
what I would hope and so.
– How about you as one of the experts?
I know you are sure your name
has come up in the context
of a new Fed Chairman.
– I would not do Fed
Chairman, treasury secretary.
I don’t think I’d ever
be picked for that, so.
– You travel a lot, you
talk to a lot of people
around the world.
What are you hearing from
the rest of the world about
the forthcoming election?
– Most of them understand
how important it’s
for Pax Americana and how
important Pax Americana
is for them and how divisive
it could be for them.
They wanted to be mature, polite.
They want it to be all encompassing.
They wanted to help the
developing nations in the
global South a little bit
more, there’s all of that,
but they want American leadership.
And America has a lot of allies.
And if we reach our handout, a lot
of people are gonna take that hand.
And you know, even the
non-aligned want more of us,
so that’s what we should be
doing and we should be doing it
very intelligently.
I think that battle line in
Ukraine is America first.
– Mm-mm.
– That is the fight for democracy.
I hope America’s learned the
world is not a safe place.
We need a very strong
military that should be a
(indistinct) non, and that if
that doesn’t go right there,
that gonna get closer to all of our allies
and we will have to defend them.
And if we don’t defend them,
it will be on our shores
one day.
So you know we’ve learned
lessons, we learned ’em in 1941,
we learned them in 1917,
we will learn them again
and so I hope we don’t.
– Still on the election,
critics of Donald Trump,
they don’t just disagree with him,
they think he’s a threat to stability,
he’s a threat even to democracy,
what do you make of that?
– I obviously hear all that stuff.
We shouldn’t ascribe
to an individual about
why they’re voting for
Donald Trump or Joe Biden.
They’re doing it for different reasons
than a very simple thing.
Some do it ’cause they
think the growth is better,
regulations are better or
America first or defender,
they all different reasons.
I think people should
learn to listen more.
Take a deep breath, try to,
you know, think as a citizen
and think about it’s good
for the long-term health
of the country and that’s
what I hope people do.
– You listen, you go on your
tours around rural America,
what do you hear?
I’ve asked you, what do you
hear from the rest of the world?
What do you hear when you
go out and about in the US?
– People are worried, you
know, like you pointed out,
the economy’s pretty good,
but they’re still worried.
And like I said, there
are legitimate reasons
that their groups of people are angry.
Now it doesn’t mean
their policies are right,
it doesn’t mean they’re exactly right,
but I think we should listen to ’em more.
Now why are inner city schools failing?
Why have incomes didn’t
go up for 20 years?
America grew at one, I
think a little less than 2%
for 20 years.
I think that’s anemic, I think
we should be, why is that?
You know, and why can’t we do a better job
for our veterans and veterans fans?
Why can’t we do a better
job for kids that wherever
you graduate high school,
if you graduate high school,
even if you don’t graduate,
that you have skills
that get you a job making $50,000 or more.
They’re all there, it all can be done.
They can all be fixed and
there’s frustration in my letter,
I had the letter from
George McGovern about,
you know the bureaucracy.
He realized he helped create
through laws and regulations
that in his own words that
I passed for good intent,
I didn’t realize the
unintended consequences,
what it does for jobs
and the ability to hire
and the growth of a business
and even litigation.
He says it’s, you know,
frivolous and not everyone
who fell in front of
my hotel was my fault.
And how costly it’s like
we’re demoralizing people.
There are bureaucracy, our
lack of collaboration, I think,
you know, demonizing business.
I mean, I think there’s a
lot we could do to fix it
and so I’m hoping people do it.
– Like might you ever
consider yourself to fix it?
No, I don’t think I’m a politician, so.
– Okay, you’re not a politician,
but you are a chief executive
and obviously there are
a lot of pressures with the job.
You had a near death
experience about four years ago
before.
– Yeah.
– With your aortic tear and before that
you’d had a big cancer scare.
How did those experiences change you?
– The cancer scare was cancer.
– Yeah.
– I don’t know,
I probably have a little
PTSD from all of them.
And I think it’s hard to
say, but you obviously,
I’m gonna use a word,
but I got it from another
lay of reporter, Julia Baird I read it,
something she wrote in Australia about
you try to live life a
little more deliberately.
So nothing, it’s not like
I’m wanted, I love what I do.
I love my job, I love my
family, I love all those things.
So nothing really changed that way,
but it is a little more deliberate,
you know and what’s better for the world
and you know, more things
like that, but those things
do change a little bit.
And I still go into denial, like,
and then someone reminds
me, I say, oh yeah,
I did go through that stuff.
So when I was being wheeled
in the operating room
for the dissection, I
knew it was like 50/50
and I didn’t have any regrets.
So you know, ’cause people
always said, do you have regrets?
I said, no, I love my
family and fortunately
they were all there.
But no, the only thing I would say,
I do wanna help this country
and the world and the free
Western world that is on my mind,
maybe that changed a little bit.
– Yeah, I mean another
traumatic moment that you lived
through was the 2008 banking crisis
for different reasons obviously,
but what lessons did you
learn about leadership
when you were taking J.P.
Morgan through that turmoil?
– Yeah, so people ask
me, what did you learn?
I didn’t really learn about
leadership then first of all,
it’s like you have to
go to war with the army
you have people say, "What
did you do differently?"
So I always believed, I always
looked at the world like
ranges of outcomes I was
always kind of prepared for.
And you know, of course
I grew up on Wall Street
and I saw a lot of crises
and we had bankruptcies
and we had companies go
bankrupt and scares and panics
and the market fell, was
it 25% in one day in 1987?
So I was kind of used to that.
And so the risk committee
used to meet once a week,
met five times a day.
And instead of it being a little bit more
of a structured meeting,
it was unstructured.
I’d say, Emma, you got a problem.
You bring whoever you
got, just don’t wait,
bring ’em up, have ’em wait outside.
And they would meet at 5:00 AM,
10:00 AM you know, Asia time
and any time call people
in the middle of the night,
people work seven days a
week, client by client.
Remember we have thousands of
clients through this crisis,
even before Bear Stearns
and WAMU and including
governance by the way.
So the lesson is be prepared beforehand
and have a functioning,
you know, risk committees
and stuff that all they
do is just do more of it.
And I remember flying
home from Saudi Arabia,
city stock was collapsing,
I canceled my trip.
I got back just to, I just to be there.
I basically spent the next three days,
twirling my thumb, right?
But I had to be there.
– Yeah.
– And so just being
prepared and being ready
and also reacting quickly,
getting the right people
in the room, having the
right conversations,
taking quick decisions.
– And now, I mean there a new,
I wouldn’t call it a crisis,
but there’s a new challenge facing banking
and that’s in the shape of AI.
How do you think that’s gonna
influence your business?
– I think there’s a lot, so
I think AI is a real thing.
So, you know, and I don’t know
what’s gonna grow like this.
We’re kind of straight line
and I think people waste
too much time guessing in
that we have 2000 people
redoing it.
We have a hundred and
people or so involved
just in research on AI, synthetic data,
you know looking at data.
And also we put AI and data together
because they’re directly related.
We now have someone at
the management table,
a very capable woman who
is responsible for both.
And then inside each business
we have mirror groups,
you know, AI and data people
and trading credit cards,
consumer, asset management, et cetera.
We run 400 use cases
already, we’re testing LLMs
on our own data.
We’re testing LMS on our
data, plus outside data.
It’s used for risk, fraud, marketing,
idea generation, handling of errors.
We’re building agents which
actually make decisions.
So, you know, you might
have a customer complaint,
we know what it is, it’ll actually decide
to send you a new debit
card that doesn’t go through
any person, we know what
happened and so it’s real
and you, we should learn it.
And to me it’s just and
also every time we meet
as a management team, every
business, what are you doing?
Yeah, what are you doing?
So the the other trick
isn’t the technology’s
getting people saying, how can I use it?
And once they start using it,
they realize the power of it
and it will be exceptional.
It’ll create jobs, it’ll
eliminate some jobs,
it’ll make everyone more productive,
it’ll be used by bad guys.
So we already do things like,
we recognize your voice,
we know who you are and
you enter our systems.
We actually identify
you multiple other ways.
Bad guys can take one second
of your voice and replicate it
and fool our voice recognition system,
so we have to make ours
better to capture that too.
We don’t use voice just so your
readers know to move money.
It’s just one of many
things we use to make sure
you’re the person you say you
are and so it’s a big deal.
It will change a lot of
things. I think for health,
I think it’ll cure cancer.
I mean I’ve already seen
things where it’s designed
new molecules to hit specific cancer cells
in a way the human brain
couldn’t come up with,
you know, it’s reading
radiology, I think I’m told
better than a radiologist can read it now.
It’ll take data from your
blood from the last 30 years,
your RNA, your DNA which
in your blood system,
it knows if you had measles and mumps
and all these things
to actually figure out
what you might have next and
so it’s gonna change the world.
Your kids kids will
probably live to a hundred,
never have cancer, you know?
So, and that’s a great thing.
Technology the other thing
has always done this,
it’s always done great things for mankind
with some downside planes
crash, drugs are misused.
– Yeah.
– You know, for steam engines
and fire burnt down buildings, you know,
and then we fed fire engines
and so it’s gonna be used
and it’s gonna be kind of
exceptional, have you used it yet?
– Yes, yes.
With mixed results, but
like you it’s sloppy.
– It’s still not good, you can.
– Yeah, but if you all go to Bing
or something like that, you
can have it summarize a book,
make up a thing, have
idea generation for you
and so think of JP Morgan.
We have huge amounts of data
that other people don’t have
that we can use to do
a better job for you.
Marketing systems, ops, safety, security,
idea generation, et cetera.
So we announced something
called Chase Media,
which is effectively that
you get to come in, you know,
the Wall Street Journal can come in
and say, we want to contact these kind,
you won’t know the names,
we won’t give you the data.
These kinds of people to
make this kind of offer.
– Mm-mm.
– And you know, at one point
we’ll be doing more of that.
– So this is the absolute
latest, the most cutting edge
of digital technology
that you’re talking about,
how the world’s gonna change.
But at the same time,
you are busy building out
something very old fashioned
branches, physical bricks
and mortar branches in hard
to reach communities,
what’s that all about?
– Yeah, so since I got
to (indistinct) in 2000
and J.P. Morgan in 2004,
it was like, it was clicks,
not bricks.
– Yeah.
– People were closing that
were making a million dollar
a year profit.
Remember the goal in
life isn’t to satisfy us
because we’re guessing about the future.
The goal in life is to satisfy you,
’cause you’re the customer who uses
our products and services.
And so we still have almost
a million people a day who go
to branches, you know, in spite
of digital account opening,
you know, of 60% or I’ve
got the exact number
still are open in the branch.
People like to visit their money.
The branches are much more advice today.
So I’ll tell you about one
that I’m opening in Bronx soon.
So in that branch in the
old days had 12 people,
it was mostly operations,
mean checks, cashing money,
taking deposits.
But now it’s advice,
small business advice,
investment advice, mortgage
advice, budgeting advice
and it’s eight or nine people.
So it’s morphed into something different,
but it’s still valuable to the consumer.
And also remember when we
build a branch, we also end up
with private banking business
and small businesses,
we help the local community.
They like that, you know,
so it, it’s got benefit.
And so the community branch
roping, we have 16 of them.
They’re bigger, we hire
locally, so in the Bronx.
So it’s a local community.
When we have food or
art, it’s done locally.
The building of the branch,
the renovation is done
by local people.
And then we hold financial
education classes to teach moms
and dads and kids about saving money,
gain a mortgage during a business
and they’ve been great and
the communities love them.
You know, I’m doing local press,
so I’ll be doing like the
Amsterdam news, the Harlem News
and wherever you go, they’re
very local press that,
you know, gets the word
out and they’ve been great.
And then we started the community manager,
so every branch had a branch manager.
These branches had a community
manager whose job isn’t
to run the branch, but to
go to the local businesses
and little leagues and
not-for-profits and churches
and synagogues and invite people
in and it’s been fabulous.
So we now have 150 community
branches around the country.
Community managers who
outreach in the community
and you know, and generating business.
– What do you ask the managers
when you go to visit them?
– Who’s walking in, what’s
working, what’s not working?
What’s slowing you down?
I always love to ask,
what’s the bureaucrat
stupid stuff we do?
Just lay it on me because
every business does,
and even if you weren’t yesterday,
you probably invented a new one today.
And then we change it,
you know, like what works,
what would you do if you ran the branch
and what would you do differently?
You know, sometimes you get ideas like,
well I changed the hours,
you know, we’re running it,
you know, nine to five,
I’d run it, you know,
from eight to 10, you know, whatever.
So we learn, we always learn.
It’s amazing when you go,
the work we did in Detroit
spawned advancing black
pathways, has spawn work
skills initiatives, has spawned
the Detroit Service Corps,
it’s spawn virtual call centers,
because of what we did in Detroit.
So now we’re doing that in
cities around the world.
And so you learn a lot when
you get out in the road.
– Now you’ve been chief exec for 18 years
and you’re obviously in
a very powerful position.
But even the most powerful people,
powerful leaders need checks and balances,
who keeps you in check?
– Well, my wife would probably
say I do and she does.
But I think my management team,
we’re all very open,
everyone we share everything.
I emote to them, you know,
ways that you wouldn’t hear me
do it elsewhere.
They emote back, you know, you’re wrong.
You didn’t read it properly,
you missed this major point,
so it’s a very open conversation.
I don’t think any of those
folks are intimidated by me,
you know, and there’s very little
after the fact conversation like, okay,
I didn’t wanna mention
this in front of everybody,
they’re brave enough to
mention in front of anybody.
And you know, I’ve had
people, you know, three
of ’em come in and say, Jamie,
you’re making a mistake.
Sit down, we wanna explain it
to you, don’t say anything,
okay, lay it on me.
So you try to create a
very open environment.
And then also, you know, we
have regulators, auditors,
press.
So we get, believe me, we get
a lot of feedback from a lot
of people even in the
press I always tell people
when sometimes it’s wrong and
we have a knee jerk reaction,
I always start by saying,
are they partially right?
Like dividing into
component pieces, you know,
so maybe there’s something
there that we should fix,
even though we think the
story was too skewed.
Separate the two, don’t just
have a knee jerk reaction
to every complaint you get.
– Just to bring it back
to what’s going on now,
the current news cycle with
these very polarizing issues
in America.
Do you think that’s the sort of thing
that chief execs like you
should comment on publicly
or make statements as a company on.
– The answer is yes.
If it’s appropriate and
you know how to do it.
So, you know, in my letter
it’s quite clear I’m a like a
full throated red-blooded, patriotic,
free enterprise capitalist and
I’m unabashed and unashamed.
I also acknowledge that we’ve
left part of society behind.
There’s nothing wrong
with acknowledging it
and trying to do something about it.
So, you know, we do a little bit of both.
And so I think it’s very hard
where people make a mistake
sometimes is when you look at certain laws
and they’re passing legislation
and people are pounding up
saying you gotta support this.
But if you read and which
we read it, so when some
of these laws got, we
read all 50 things in it,
you and I would agree with
some and we wouldn’t agree
with the others.
So we’re being asked to
make a binary decision.
I said, no, we’re not doing that.
So we’ll support the LGBT community.
We’ll support free, fair, safe voting.
I don’t have to get involved
in every little voting act
that every state’s put in
place because you know,
some are tougher than others,
but most of ’em generally, you know,
are free, fair and safe and so you gotta
be a little careful.
But when it comes to defending our people,
absolutely we’re gonna do it.
– Mm-mm.
– When it comes to lifting
up other parts of society,
absolutely.
We think lifting up, you
know, parts of community,
I remind people J.P. Morgan reaches out,
we’re in a hundred countries, we reach out
to 12,000 businesses, 80 million
Americans, cities, schools,
states, hospitals, the military.
We hire vets, we hire disabled,
we hire, we also reach out
to disadvantaged communities.
And I mentioned that
community branch and they work
and they generate business
and they help lift up society.
You know, if you can take, I always say,
and I we use Detroit as example.
If Detroit was a failing
city and is no longer
a failing city, that’s good for the rest
of America and it’s good for Detroit,
we happen to be the
biggest bank in Detroit,
so it’s obviously good for us generally.
And so, you know, we work on it.
We also work I always think is
important for business people
is, it’s one thing for me to,
we do skills initiatives
in New York, you know,
the CEO jobs council in New
York trying to get, you know,
and we’ve helped hire, you
know, 30, 40,000 kids outta CUNY
and we’re doing programs with the mayor
and the Department of Education
chancellor in the high schools now,
all started by my wife by the way.
But we also, and I think
it’s important that business
get involved in public policy.
We can do all that we
want, but if we can make
the public education system
better, the VA system better,
the FA system better, the highway safer,
the bridge is safer,
that’s good for everybody
and so I do think business
should get involved in public
policy as appropriate.
– So you’re often asked,
when are you going to retire?
And your answer is often in five years.
– Yeah.
– So is 2029 the year?
– No, I stopped saying that.
So first of all, it’s
totally up to the board,
we’ve got wonderful people.
We’ve always said, I’m
one of the few people
who has a president in place
who could take over tomorrow.
And not many people could say that.
And if you spoke to the
people who know the company,
they would say they’re
four or five people,
they would be very comfortable
with running the company.
You know, they’re being moved
around at different jobs.
They’re very good, they’re
very happy, I’m very happy
the board will decide.
I think I would tell you
when I can no longer give my
best, am I all, I shouldn’t do it,
I should move on at that point.
But you know, I still have
the energy and the capability
and I still think I’m
aging well in terms of,
you do gain wisdom as you get older.
And hopefully you can
provide value to the company
and my country through this perch.
– So I’ve got some final questions here,
they’re short questions
that require short answers.
– Oh, okay.
– How many days should
people be in the office?
– Five is ideal.
There are some jobs where,
you know, taking a day
or two at home is fine,
it is very job specific.
– Are Americas downtowns dead?
– No, I think some are
gonna have difficulty,
’cause their own policies, but no.
– If you’re a young person
and you want to work
at J.P. Morgan, what should
you study at college?
– It almost doesn’t matter
to tell you the truth,
’cause you’re looking for
smart, ethical, decent people.
You know, if you took history or not.
But I do think in business
you should learn the language,
your business, which is accounting
and learn a little bit basic business.
So I think it would help to do accounting,
finance markets, something like that.
– On the rare occasion
that you take a day off,
what do you do?
– So my daughters have said to me,
"Dad, you need some more hobbies."
I love my family, so we
have a lot of family dinners
when I’m around.
We have mostly Sunday
night, maybe Saturday night,
but I told ’em, here’s my hobbies.
And we do a lot of this
together, we hike together,
we take vacations together.
I love wine, I love music, I love history.
Actually I try to exercise every day.
You know, I just started
playing squash again,
which I’m still worried
about, but I’m gonna do it,
but I was doing my
10-year-old granddaughter, so.
– So you say you love music,
any particular type of music?
– Almost all.
– All.
– Yeah.
– Eclectic
– Rock, Jazz.
Jazz is the only one I don’t,
but I don’t, I just don’t,
it doesn’t resonate for some reason.
But you know, I grew up with classical,
I grew up playing classical piano,
I can play the guitar a little bit.
I’m gonna pick that up
again soon too, by the way.
So I love Elton John, Bruce
Springsteen, Rolling Stones,
Beatles, you name it.
– What’s your morning routine?
– Okay, I wake up usually at 4:35.
I read five papers, you’ll be happy
to hear in a very specific form.
So I flick through the post,
’cause everyone else does it.
I read the front page
of the Washington Post,
any story that I find very interesting
and the business section,
which is very narrow
and the editorials, I think
there’s some very smart people
at the editorials there that
then I read the New York Times
front section, beginning to
end all of it, whether I like
what they’re saying or
not, I read their business
section, which isn’t great.
Then I read the Wall Street
Journal front Section Exchange
next and then the FT and
the reason I do FT last is
because all the other ones
are very much skewed to the US
and you know, we operate
in a hundred countries.
So the FT gives you a better
view, like the Economist,
I read The Economist every weekend
of what’s going on in
Pakistan and India and the UK
and the Middle East and
China and the Economist
is unbelievably well done, FT
covers all that ground too.
So I love it if you know
it takes me an hour.
Then I do a lot of other
reading, by the way,
both internal mail, Axios, you know,
Politico, stuff like that.
So I like reading, I’ll do
it for hours in the morning,
but then I like to get a little exercise
and go into the office, so.
– And do you ever switch off your phone?
– I am not a fanatic on the phone.
I don’t even have it
here, I have it outside,
but I think people should spend
a little less time in that,
a little more time thinking,
I haven’t done podcasts.
When my exercise, I’m either doing music
or watching some stupid
show or something like that.
So, but I’m not a fan, I’m
not on any social media.
Every year I test it, I go
on for literally just a week
to see what everyone else is doing.
You know, reels and Instagram
and Facebook and TikTok
and then I click out of it.
– Never attempted.
– No.
– Good.
Well, Jamie Dimon, thank
you very much indeed,
– Emma, it was a pleasure, thank you.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon discusses his concerns about the future of the economy, ‘Bidenomics,’ overseas wars, the U.S.-China relationship, AI and more in a wide-ranging interview with WSJ’s Emma Tucker.

Chapters:
0:00 U.S. consumer
3:21 U.S. economy
4:46 ‘Bidenomics’ and the Fed
6:11 Banking crisis
7:56 Geopolitics
12:41 China
15:31 U.S. politics
19:44 Near-death experience
21:06 Leadership
22:46 AI
26:17 Brick and mortar branches
29:27 Checks and balances
33:20 Retirement and final questions

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