Jamie Dimon, Chairman & CEO, JPMorganChase & Co., 10/14/26

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Terrific thank you. Over 300,000 JP Morgan Chase employees worked for tonight's speaker. At one point, one of those employees was his own father. Theodore, Jamie's father, was a son of Greek immigrants. He was a veteran Wall Street investor and advisor who at one point, through a series of mergers and acquisitions, worked at both Smith Barney and JP Morgan Chase at the same time as his son. Theodore continued to go into the office as a broker up until the final months of his life. Jamie grew up in the Jackson Heights area of New York, attended the Browning School and went on to Tufts University, where he studied psychology and economics. He then went to business school at Harvard, where he graduated as a Baker Scholar, an honor given to the top students in the class. But perhaps the most important education came after Harvard. Rather than take a conventional path into banking, Jamie went to work for controversial visionary Sandy Weil, a decision that would shape the next several decades of his career. He followed Weil through a remarkable series of consolidations, helping build what eventually became Travelers and then Citigroup. Along the way, Jamie became CFO and then President of Commercial Credit, President and COO of Travelers, and ultimately Co-Chairman and Co-CEO of Solomon Smith Barney. In 1998, after the creation of Citigroup, Jamie became President of the new company. But his tenure there would be short. He and Weil parted ways, and Jamie found himself by his early 40s outside the company he had helped build. It became the turning point. In 2000, Bank One, then headquartered right here in Chicago, brought Jamie in as chairman and CEO. The bank was struggling. It had issued a series of earnings warnings, and Jamie was brought in to fix it. He cut costs, strengthened the balance sheet, rebuilt the management team, and restored the bank to profitability and growth. Under his leadership, the bank's $511 million loss in 2000 became $3.5 billion in record earnings by 2003. In 2004, he engineered its merger with JPMorgan Chase. Jamie became President and Chief Operating Officer of the combined company, then CEO in 2006, and chairman a year later. For more than two decades, he has led what has become one of the most powerful financial institutions in the world. He guided JPMorgan Chase through the financial crisis, the pandemic, and extraordinary changes in technology, markets, and geopolitics. And he has remained unusually outspoken about the role business can play, not only in creating wealth, but in strengthening communities and expanding opportunity. So tonight, we have with us not simply the most influential banker of his generation, but a leader whose own life is a story of ambition, resilience, reinvention, and as his father demonstrated, an extraordinary work ethic. Please join me in welcoming the chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon. [00:04:21] Jamie Dimon: First of all, I'm thrilled to be back in Chicago. Before we start, I don't want to forget, my wife would be here, but my 38-year-old daughter's getting married for the first time on Saturday, so she's quite busy. And she says hi to all of you, particularly Arnie Duncan, the Bessers. And one correction, my father did not work for me. If he were here, he'd say, "I work for him." My job was to make his job work, and so on. So let me ask you, did you remember all of that about your life? I repress a lot of it, but yeah, I do remember. They always forget I was fired that day. Yeah. [00:05:03] Speaker 1: Yeah, we cleaned it up a little bit. Exactly. Thank you. So look, as we've been talking this evening, and even as we were sitting at the table, people are constantly coming by and challenging your memory. Do you remember this? Do you remember that? You have an extraordinary memory, so I'm going to test your memory right off the bat as well. Is it actually true that at 14 years old, you researched and bought your very first stock? [00:05:33] Jamie Dimon: Yes. Yes, that's true, yeah. My dad was a stockbroker, and I was interested in stocks, so I bought a couple of stocks back then. PEs were like five. It was 1974, and it's instructive about what happens in the market sometimes. Did you make money off of it? I made some on some and not some on others, and I did fine, yeah. Good, good. I still make my own individual stock decisions, by the way. [00:06:02] Speaker 1: So for you, even at that age, was it preordained in your own mind that you would follow in your [00:06:10] Jamie Dimon: father's footsteps? Absolutely not. My parents, as you said, my grandparents were Greek immigrants, didn't finish high school like a lot of, you know, immigrant families, like a lot of folks in this room. And you grew up with the value system, which is, you know, have a purpose in life. Purpose was you could be a teacher, or a doctor, or a caregiver, or a business person. Never got pushed any which way. So my older brother's a physicist, a real physicist. Went to, you know, IBM labs, Neil Borden Institute, University of Chicago. He got his PhD. I have a twin brother who is an educator. My oldest daughter is in the business, but my middle one is a reporter. My youngest one is a kind of a psychologist. And when she got that degree, I said to her, we now have the same job. As you know, managing people is a little pain in the ass sometimes. But just treat everyone well, make the world a better place, have a purpose, work hard, do the best you can. And so those were more the values. And my dad actually wanted to be a musician. But he probably wouldn't have been able to marry my wife if he was a musician. His wife, yeah. [00:07:18] Speaker 1: So even with that said, though, did your parents, did your father, once he discovered that you had an interest in this, did he cultivate it? Or did he take a hands-off approach and back up and let you -- let [00:07:33] Jamie Dimon: you just -- Well, he cultivated it. He would -- I read Graham and Dodd when I was -- I'm a nerd. People don't think -- they don't understand. I read everything. I was a nerd. I read -- but he cultivated it because he would talk to me about it. But he also cultivated my brother being a physicist and cultivating history and all those kind of things. It wasn't unique to that. But yeah. And you want to try something humbling. People think they're very smart. Take home an annual report. Rip out the pages so is the stock price. And he did this with me a couple of times. And then say what you think it's worth. You know, a company you might understand. You know, I know McDonald's is in the room and some other -- say, what do you -- and you'll be shocked how wrong you are. And it is humbling about how you value something. And so, you know, it's just -- it's intellectually challenging. But, you know, financial services is challenging because everything that happens in the world every day affects your life and affects your companies. And, you know, wherever you do business, wherever you buy, whatever you do, you know, it's an important thing to try to understand. [00:08:27] Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, there's -- there is no doubt that you are a New Yorker. And I mean that in the best possible way. I mean that's -- I mean that's -- I mean that's -- that's a compliment, I think. But right below the surface, you're also the Chicagoan. Because you have spent a number of years in Chicago. And everyone in this room who is spending time in Chicago or who's from Chicago can understand why you would want to come to the all-around greatest city in the world, Chicago. [00:08:57] Jamie Dimon: But -- In this very room. In this very room. When I used to come here and, you know, I would say, you guys -- I remember the press asked me, are you moving to Chicago? Yes. Are your kids moving to Chicago? Yes. Is your wife moving to Chicago? Yes. Are the kids going to school here? Yes. Are you really coming to Chicago? And I said if I died in Chicago and they sent my ashes back to New York, people in Chicago would say, we told you. So I actually prefer Chicago than New York. The family loved it here. We loved the hospitality and the restaurants. And when I first got into the civic committee, you know, which people thought -- Bank One hosted it. They thought I'd cancel it. You know, tough on expenses, too much money. I thought it was fabulous. I thought the city actually gets together. The CEOs and the hospitals and the schools to try to talk about how you can better your city. So I actually thought that was great. And so, I'm very pro-Chicago. New York is much more -- first of all, it's much bigger. It's much more anonymous. It's much more -- you know, they don't really care who you are. But when I came to Chicago, wherever I went in Chicago, they'd say, what do you think of Chicago? I go back to New York. Not one New Yorker has ever said to me, what do you think of Chicago? How do you compare New York and Chicago? They're just -- you know that chart that shows, you know, New York City and the rest of the world? That's how they are pretty much. [00:10:26] Speaker 1: Yeah, right, right. Well, I assure you these are 2,000 of your closest Chicago friends, so that will not get out. Don't worry about that one. Yeah, I forgot this is being broadcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the attraction of Chicago is clear. But can you help us understand, you know, at the time that you came to Chicago, it was a really critical period for you from a professional perspective? You had taken about a year and a half off of Citigroup. You had spent time with your family, but you were figuring out what you were going to do next. And as we mentioned, Bank One did have its challenges at that time. I think at least one analyst was -- wrote that not even Hercules could fix Bank One at the time. Yeah, yeah. But you chose to come here. That is the job that you chose over others. And I assume you had opportunities even outside of the banking industry. I did. So why Bank One at that point in time? [00:11:19] Jamie Dimon: You know, so I did have others, some around the world, but Home Depot wanted me. And I went down to see Arthur Blank and Ken Langone and Bernie Marcus. And being very honest, I said to them, "Until you guys called me?" I had never been in the Home Depot. But they said, "We don't care. We want your heart and your soul and how you work and your work ethic." But it was moving to Atlanta, which is harder. It was a business I didn't naturally understand. So I understood financial services. Like you spend your whole life playing tennis, and then all of a sudden you can become an expert in, you know, something else. And it was a big challenge. You know, the company was doing terribly. The stock was down 50%. The shareholders all hated the company. I mean, here I am, a brash New Yorker coming to Chicago. And a lot of people told me, "Jamie, you'll be rejected like a cancer in Chicago." But, you know, I looked at it and said, "You know, we'll make it what it is." And very different to other people. I didn't come here and complain about it. I didn't do stuff. I didn't negotiate a lot for a comp. I said, "This is a platform. It's got some pretty good bones. It's got some problems. You know, suck it up. Make it what it is." And I still feel that way. I still give people jobs. Like the best business in the world. I give it to them. And they say to me, "This is not great. I don't like that person." I said, "Are you kidding me? Like, put your big boy pants on." Like, you know, just take it in and make it better. And stop complaining about every little thing you don't like. And so I hadn't finished. I could have not done anything. I could have just started a private equity firm or something like that. But I wanted to see what I could do. And I took half of my money, half of it, that day when I was made the CEO and put it in that stock. And not because I thought the stock was a bargain. Because I wanted everyone to know that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go down with the frigging ship. And anyone who enjoys know that I'm going to do the best I can, as hard as I can, for as long as I can to make it the best possible bank I can. I used to come to these things, by the way. And I'd be get assaulted by a lot of you complaining about your bank accounts. And you were right. It was terrible service. And you're closing branches. The hours were terrible, and the systems were terrible. And by far I quickly learned that I'd say, don't complain to me, because I can't take notes right now. But I used to put -- some of you may remember this. I put complaint tests outside. And when you come out -- and I said, I will fix every single last one of them, which we tried to do. Like, you know, do a better job serving people, start opening branches and fixing things. It was hard to move to Chicago. My kids were 14, 12, and 10. It was great for the family. It was kind of like a bonding experience. And they all loved it here. And it was hard for them to leave. And I had to wait to -- I did the J.B. Morgan deal, and I commuted for three years. It was kind of hard. And so, anyways, it is a great town. You're lucky to have it. Well, you turned it around in a very short [00:14:16] Speaker 1: time period. It went, and I think in 2000, the market cap was approximately 20 billion. And by the end of 2003, it was close to 50 billion. And obviously, you had the merger with J.P. Morgan Chase. What I want to know, though, is given your prior experience with Citigroup, when you merged with J.P. Morgan Chase, you didn't actually become the CEO immediately. I understand that the merger at the time was clearly in the best interest of the shareholders. That's -- that was -- that was number one. But you're still human. And on a personal level, did you -- were you concerned at all that when the dust settled, whenever it settled, since you weren't going to become the CEO right at the outset, that you might find yourself again on the outside looking in on an organization that you put your blood, sweat, and tears in the building? Yeah. So it's a great question. So [00:15:10] Jamie Dimon: at the last night, my board, we're having dinner at my house, and they started asking that question. And they had a little wine to drink. And they're like, you know, we're not going to do the deal unless you're the CEO immediately. They're political people. They've never done a good job. And I finally said, guys, you know, but here's what the deal was, okay? I was effectively in charge from day one. And while we got the premium, and the name is called J.P. Morgan Chase, the board was going to be eight of them, eight Bank One and eight J.P. Morgan. I knew several of the board directors. I was going to be -- unless 75% said I couldn't be CEO, I was going to be CEO within 18 months. So I effectively had control. I was very close to Bill Harrison, who was the CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase. So we were like this. We've both been through lots of terrible -- we had done a lot of mergers, a lot of them at J.P. at the old Travelers and stuff like that. And they're hard, you know, emerging people and systems and ops and cultures, and they're brutal on people. And he had done the same. And so we both knew that we're putting this thing, but the business logic was impeccable. If you look at the economics, it was fairly impeccable. The price was kind of impeccable. We got a nice premium. We knew immediately we were going to save a lot of money on duplicate costs. And we announced the management team the same day. And I knew not just my management team, I knew half of his management team. And it was very clear and very organized. And we started working it right away. And the stock, I think -- I forgot the stock very rarely goes up. The stock went up like 10% that day. So, we knew it would be a pretty good thing. [00:16:46] Speaker 1: So, moving to present day, if we sort of have a conversation about the overall economy, and if we had to choose one word that's probably top of mind for most people in this room and people across the country, when they think about the economy, it would probably be uncertainty. Right? There are issues with trade. There's spikes with fuel. There's inflation. There's Iran. There's Ukraine. The list goes on and on and on. At the same time, there seems to be a lot of stimulus in the system. You have the -- and look, big, beautiful bill. I didn't name it. But there's a big, beautiful bill. There's deregulation. There is unprecedented levels of investment in AI and AI infrastructure. When you think about the overall economy, are you amazed by how fundamentally strong it is at some level and that it just keeps taking gut punches? Or are you concerned that some of the stimulus is, in fact, covering up or delaying a significant negative economic event? [00:17:59] Jamie Dimon: Yeah. It's a great question. You laid out all the issues. There's always uncertainty. And I remind people, when you look at the economy, if you can open up the newspaper of any day, of any week, of any month since World War II, and you have wars, you have politics, you have polarization, you've got deficits, you have impeachments, you have all these various things. But it's very hard to predict the cycles from any of that. Yeah. I do think this is different. It's not different because of the economy. It's different because of Ukraine, wars, Iran, Middle East, our relationship with China, and the fact that we're running the largest global deficits the world's ever seen, ever. And we're doing it during good times. And so that's true for America. It's actually true for most of Europe. It's true for China. It's true for parts of the rest of the developing world. So I would say, yeah, this is a moment where these things are kind of moving tectonic plates. We'll have effects that you can't completely understand, but it'll end up affecting the economy. But we borrowed and spent 12 -- it wasn't the one big, beautiful bill, guys. I mean, we have been profligate now for years. And we've spent -- and borrowed and spent 12 trillion dollars since 2020. And QE, you know, if you go back to the beginning, it was $8 trillion. And those numbers are almost equal for the rest of the world. So the deficit spending of governments, who now have 100% debt to GDP on average, you know, different by country. And we've got to remember our government spending. It's inflationary. It also does something which is unbelievable and makes you all feel good. It's like a heroin. Drives your corporate profits. There's a direct correlation for additional government spending and corporate profits. And corporate profits are at the margin. So if your margins are 10%, you know, your profit in the marginal sales is going to be 30%. So when governments spend a trillion dollars, that goes into spending, that goes into all your businesses -- machine tools, burgers, pools, homes. And then we all feel good because we're all making a lot of money. And it's a little bit of a false thing if it's inflationary, which it is. So yeah, I would put this as more uncertain. But the way we handle that, and this is important to me, is we don't guess at that. We prepare for low rates, high rates, stock prices down 40%, credit spreads going up, bond rates at 8%, high yield at 15%. And JP Morgan can handle all of that. So we don't guess how we run the company. And the reason we try to handle all of that is so we can serve you in good times and bad times, that you don't have to worry about us. And we're not making, you know, we take a lot of risk, but it's analytical risk. And we try to protect ourselves from the fat tail. So, but you know, I do think that people should spend a little more time thinking about the risk in their own business. So if you're leveraged, you may have to borrow money at, you know, and the 10 year might be a 7% and credit spreads might be, you know, four or 500 basis points higher. And that will bankrupt a lot of companies, you know, and that's quite possible. You know, and people look at me like I'm, I'm the devil or something like that. Things happen, folks, read economic history. And the market isn't, the market doesn't mean anything. You know, if the market was all time high in 72, down 45% in 74, it was all time high in 80, down 45% in 82, 1990, same thing. The internet bubble, the same thing. The crisis, the same thing. You know, COVID, it was down quite a bit, but of course, you know, we thank God that only lasted for six months, basically economically. And so, yeah, you have to be prepared for these things to run a good business. Otherwise, you're, you're taking bets that you don't fully understand. And, but the most important part of that, and I know I might be in your list to talk about is the geopolitical effect of all that. That is far more important than what it does the economy in the short run. [00:21:37] Speaker 1: Yeah. With respect to the debt and adding approximately $2 trillion a year to the debt, in your opinion, is it even possible to resolve that problem without a crisis? [00:21:51] Jamie Dimon: I wish that our government would form a real committee of the Congress, uh, and say that we are going to resolve the problem. Uh, and they, they almost had it with the Simpson ball commission. It almost worked. That deal should have been done. I, I would, if I was either side in that deal, I've taken the best that I could have gotten. It would have been home run to the United States of America. It wasn't a formal commission. It was an outside commission. So it wasn't like a thumbs up vote or something like that. And, you know, Obama and Paul Ryan got a pissing debate over $800 billion, which is a 10 year number. I would have, I would have walked out of that with a deal, whether I gave the 800 or took the 800. That deal would have been a home run to the United States of America. And that's the way we should do it. Unfortunately, it's unlikely to be done that way. What's likely to happen is you're going to get volatility in the bond market, which we're fine with. The government won't be fine with it. Uh, people get panicked rates might go up, uh, credit spreads might gap out. And then, you know, the bond vigilantes will come back and then we'll be forced to do it. And that'll happen in stages. It won't happen overnight. The first thing is the volatility in the market bonds, you know, yields going up, people talking about the deficit all the time. The second stage is, it's more like a bond ramp where rates started going up because people are starting to not want to own treasuries and they're afraid of inflation or something like that. So I wouldn't rule that out. I'm not going to say it's going to happen, but I wouldn't rule it [00:23:14] Speaker 1: out. Like I said, we're completely prepared for it. Yeah. You, I've heard you talk before about, um, this analogy between tectonic plates and crises and the way that crises move around the world and impact the world. Um, can you, can you elaborate on that a little more? And also, I know you're, I know you're a student of history. If you think about where we are today with your tectonic plate analogy with risk, when is the last time that the risk level has been this high in history with respect to sort of global events, um, that, that you would relate to tectonic plates? Yeah. So the, [00:23:51] Jamie Dimon: the important part, I'll go back to part of it, but the important part, it hasn't really happened since pre-World War II. And I'm talking about the geopolitics of Ukraine, Iran, Middle East, uh, China, that, and that, I'm gonna go back to why it's the most important. The last time we had some kind of moving tectonic plates was a great financial crisis where those were not, that was economic. That was too much leverage in the system. It was everywhere. You know, banks were to blame, brokers were to blame, mortars were to blame. Uh, and, and it was known. I, I knew at the time that there's extraordinary leverage in the system. We actually don't have, if you look at our system day economically, the corporate bond market is, corporations are in good financial shape. Consumers are not in bad shape. You can argue they're getting a little weaker at the lower income side. Uh, it's governments that have the problem there. There is leverage in the financial system you don't see that I see. It's pretty high. I think it's manageable. I don't think it's systemic. But back in '07, it was systemic. There was going to be a huge amount of mortgage problems that were filtered through investments all around the world. And that caused panic and people, you know, when they panic, they want more safe investments and they get out of risky investments. And that's what you saw that could happen again too, by the way. But, uh, we don't have quite that in the financial side. The thing that's the most important to me is when Ukraine was invaded by a large Russian army, uh, five years ago, it's now been five, almost five years. Uh, that, that it didn't change anything. I think it should remind people the world's a dangerous freaking place. And that, that, you know, peace is at hand and everyone's going to do something. Totally untrue. It was never true. I think people just lulled to the false sense of security. Now you have 500,000 dead. I'm told that the average life cycle, the average life span of a Russian soldier who's put on the front line, 28 minutes. And, and it's brutal. This is the, when you look at these things, it looks like World War I and World War II. And he threatened nuclear stuff at one point, aided and embedded by Iran and North Korea. And Iran, you know, I'm not one of those guys who stands in front of people and says, because I really don't like it. It wasn't an enemy threat. We didn't have to do this. They've been killing and murdering people around the world for 47 years. And the notion that, and I'm not saying what we did was the right thing to do or the strategy and all that, but don't deny that that was bad. And what did we, the Western world do? We, we were attacked by proxies and we attacked the proxy and maybe we should have gone after the head of the snake, you know, and the nuclear weapon, them getting nuclear weapons is probably the worst thing that could happen to mankind. Then all your grandkids, their lives, they might be here. Nuclear proliferation is far worse than any other thing that you can imagine that could take place in this planet. So, but North Korea and Iran aiding Ukraine, China is aiding them. So as long as China's aiding and abetting some of this, it's going to be a tough time, our relationship. You know, they, they have rare earths. You know, we, we're kind of like codependent at this point. So we're in this kind of truce, but think of the military alliances of America. We have 40. So that, you know, with NATO, it's like 27 and then Australia, Philippines, South Korea, a bunch of other countries, and that's held the world together. That created Pax Americana. God, did we make mistakes. I mean, America made a lot of mistakes, but it was never done because of self injury. They wanted people to gold or oil or any of that kind of stuff. And that's still holding together. We haven't left NATO. You know, we torture our allies a little bit over it. We haven't left these other allowances. And this is the economic side that we have 20 fairly large free trade agreements, big trade agreements around the world and people rely on us. You know, without American leadership, you know, as much as they make fun of America, they know that without us, there is no leadership. You will be negotiating side by side deals with China and Russia, and they won't like it. And I should have pointed out the other major risk of the Western world is Europe has gone from 90% of our GDP per person to 70. Okay, they can't afford their military. They can barely afford the safety nets. The Russian army can march directly into Paris today if they wanted to. And they're kind of in deep trouble. Now, when you say it, I'm not talking about next year, I'm talking about the tectonic plate, meaning they have to break out of that. And we should help them. So I think we should push them to do the right stuff. We should do a bit more trade deals with them. And what we don't want to do is fragment the Western world. If we fragment, if we are part of fragmenting the Western world, everyone will have to look at who they do business with and how they do business with it. And, and that is, you know, I, this op-ed I wrote, the first line is, I don't want to read the book in the year 2050, how the West was lost. And it will be because of fragmentation in the Western world. Everyone by themselves, I need Russian gas, you need, you know, you need the Chinese markets, and the Chinese are tough, you know, and they, they can do what they want. I don't think they have to be a natural enemy of ours. But the other thing about them is if you don't have a common trade barriers of sorts that are fair, it's gonna be hard to stop them. And you go to China, if you go to Germany today, they don't have a proper defense industrial base, but their real industrial base was extraordinary cars, machine tools, all this equipment, I'm sure you, if you're in business, you have a lot of them in your plans. That's being attacked today by the Chinese, and their stuff is good. And they're going to lose. And this is, you know, you can see it like right in front of you, but it's going to take a while to play out. And we have obviously bad politics around this back to me is the most important thing, not what happens to the economy next year, all that. And so there is no replacement for American leadership. And I think helping Europe is America first. You know, if you want to help America, you know, you got you better think really clearly about these strategic things in the long run. don't misuse your military and all that. But, you know, think clearly about which the long term interests of America. I also think by America first is not a bad thing. Can you imagine American president running and saying, I have a great idea, America second. You know, of course it's America first. [00:29:41] Speaker 1: So with all of that, how do you think about I want to go curl up in a corner, by the way, but how with all of that and all that you see and that, you know, and the way that you're thinking about it. How do you manage that risk for JP Morgan Chase? What what are the most significant risks to your company? And what do you what do you pay attention to? And what do you just consider to be noise? [00:30:16] Jamie Dimon: How do you how do you manage that? Yeah. So we I think people would be surprised how what we do to manage risk like we know what the effect of all these things are on most of our clients, higher rates, higher prices, I mean, literally name by name. You know, we we have scenarios we run, you know, the fed seat card test is one a year, we do 100 a week. About markets going out 40%, credit spreads gapping out, oil going to 200, you name it, wars in different parts of the world. And we look at the immediate effect, the secondary effect, the third order effect, the fourth order effect, so we can handle it. You know, it's not we have to make a lot of money in all those scenarios. And we just very we try to be very disciplined. And knowing that we're still gonna make mistakes. There's no chance we're gonna figure every every little thing out. But I remind people our goal is is simple is to serve our clients through thick or thin. And so the goal is to help have a healthy, vibrant company so you can invest in the future. You've never seen me since I've been a bank borne or JB borne chase, go in and out of investing. Never. It's very consistent. Meanwhile, the economy has gone up, the economy has gone down, the economy has gone up, the economy has gone down. You've never seen it. I know the economy has gone up, the economy has gone down. We plan for that. And so we, you know, opening branches, training people, deploying capital, that, you know, working with our cities and all the stuff we do is very consistent. And then can we handle that? And if you were on my board and you walked in one day and said, I mean, we look, I can't even mention some of them because they're so bad that, uh, uh, uh, if I wasn't on TV, I'd probably say it, um, but you'd be surprised. And I tell the board, this is, this is how much we can lose out of that. And you're talking about 10, 20, 30 billion dollars. And so I'm quite conscious of that. But again, it's, I'm not afraid of that. We try to navigate. And then we try to help. We operate in a hundred countries around the world. We deal with all the governments. We, you know, we bank half these governments and we try to help them develop their countries and prepare for these same kind of risks. And the biggest one you didn't mention, but is cyber. That's become the biggest one that faces all of us today. Bar none. Like it's, it's immediate today. We have a lot of work to do to get our hands around that one. [00:32:19] Speaker 1: Yeah. Some people actually consider you to be fairly conservative in terms of you, you, you, you talk a lot about the fortress balance sheet and do you ever get pushback from your own investors saying, Hey, you are, you're leaving money on the table and does, does that bother you? And have you lost any investors because of it? [00:32:44] Jamie Dimon: Yeah. I do a little bit. Uh, and this, you know, this goes, goes back to everyone's doing it. And everyone's doing these like, like our leverage going into great financial crisis was literally a half or a third of all the other banks. And so you easily could have said, well, I do what they're doing. You'll be making a lot more. Absolutely. But we survived and almost, and we didn't need to be bailed out by the government and everybody else did. And so, and I, I kind of run it like it's our money. Like it's your money. We're a steward of your money, but I'm not going to take the kind of risk. If you're wrong on something, you know, you can lose your company, have to lay off a lot of employees and stuff like that. And that's happening today, by the way, you know, we had an analyst call the other day, analyst earnings. And I was very specific on the call. We are cutting back on certain types of credit because it's going too far. And we will get a lot of pushback from, you know, a lot of companies out there. Well, everyone else is doing it. My attitude is I call up the CEO and say, that's great. Take the other deal. Totally fine with me. I'm not going to be pushed into something that I think is stupid, not just for me, probably stupid for you too, by the way. And I try to explain it to some of the folks. So yeah, some shareholders are asking, why didn't you do this? Why didn't you do that? And, you know, they don't run the company, you know, and -- There's a lot of talk. But I am conservative that way. There's nothing -- I say not a little because they're quite conservative. Like, if you look at our accounting, it's as conservative as I can make it. And every single attribute, as opposed to, you know, can you spend software longer term, can you book more profits up front, can you do -- I fight the other way around. Because what happens in the downturn, particularly in financial companies, is that all reverses on you. Whatever aggressive stuff you do in accounting, you'll have to reverse. And so if I took you through specific stuff, you'd be surprised. Yeah. And the accountants always say to me -- I say publicly, you know, just ask me, I'll account for more conservatively. They say, you can't do that. I say, I can, because I know that they do it. You know, so we book less profits up front. We put more reserves up front. We write -- if you're about a company, you have, like, software you built for $200 million that we know we wasted 100, I'd make you write it for 100. I could care less that we could defer. It's worthless? Get rid of it. And I mean, every day, I want to do that. No assets in the balance that don't make sense. No account doesn't make sense. You know, no upfront in profits, particularly when you're talking about trading books. You know, the traders, they're making all the money, and you're booking it now. And that's what happened in the great financial crisis. And you're starting to see a little bit of that today, too. [00:35:10] Speaker 1: There's a lot of talk about the possibility that the day may come where the dollar is no longer a global reserve currency. Do you put any credence in that? And if it did, in fact, happen, what would the implications be for both the United States and for other countries around the world? [00:35:30] Jamie Dimon: Yeah, so it is directly related to two factors, and it can't happen right away. If we have the strongest military in the world, and the strongest economy in the world, we will be the preeminent reserve currency. It is those two things. It's not the hypothetical thing about other stuff. When I give you a dollar, and we preserve the value of it, you can do whatever you want with it. You can build a company, you can buy a company, you control it, you go to other countries, you can't do whatever you want. You need their permission to invest it, or something like that. But I was in a country somewhere in the Middle East, and also in Europe, and the people said, we took our gold out of the vaults in New York City. We have vaults there, too, by the way. And we moved it to our country here, and our country there. You know what I said to him? Really? I said, your vaults? I said, you have three armies within 400 miles who can come take your gold. But I'm being questioned. That's the real world. This hypothetical shit about pissing America off by, "I don't want to leave my gold in America," you're not thinking clearly about safety. That gold is protected by the Atlantic, the Pacific, the United States military, the rule of law. But if we are not the preeminent military, the preeminent economy, you will see our reserve status come down. The world will fragment, and we will be maybe one of the best economies out there, but it'll be a very different thing than before. And you could see a world with multiple reserves. There are today. We're 60 percent. I think the euro is 20 percent, the yen is 10 percent, a spattering and stuff. But of course, China wants to do it. When America misuses our economic power, which we do misuse sometimes, and how we move money and the sanctions we go through, there are a lot of people that say, "I would prefer not to conduct my business in dollars." And I wouldn't either if I were them. So we have to be a little careful how we use our power sometimes. We use it for the right way and not the wrong way, and so on. But it's okay for now. But you have seen, if you pay it, if you're watching, China and a lot of other central banks, central banks' ownership of treasuries is coming down. It has been for years. On the other hand, if you're a big investor around the world, investors, so think of sovereign wealth funds and pension plans, their actual ownership is going up a little bit. [00:37:45] Speaker 1: Anthropic put out their IPO prospectus. And 80 of the, I think, 260 pages or so were all about risk. And embedded in there was this nice little piece of sunshine about AI potentially posing an existential risk to humanity. Have you ever seen anything like that in your career in an IPO prospectus? My guess is that no other company could actually then have an IPO if that was the fundamental essence of their business, and it was posing an existential risk to humanity. [00:38:43] Jamie Dimon: What is your... If it happens, they don't need to tell you that. [00:38:47] Speaker 1: You don't need to know. So what is your, what is your, which end of the spectrum are you on? Because there are people who do and do absolutely believe that. We are hearing that. Then there's the other side that says that we can harness it for good. It can be controlled. It can be harnessed for [00:39:04] Jamie Dimon: good. Where are you on that, on that spectrum? So first of the, this is instructive of our bureaucracy, how it grows over time, the stupid things. That risk section was supposed to be a summary of a prospectus. And now it's, they're 80 pages on their own. I mean, and this happens all the time with stuff. They just grow over time. I'm in both. So the big, big context, AI is real. We've been doing it since 2012, not all of a sudden. We use it. There are a thousand risk cases that we use it for. We have thousands of people doing it. We use it for risk, fraud, marketing, underwriting, design, customer service, you know, cutting extra error rates. And you're going to see more and more in a good way. It's going to save a lot of lives. Like you have, you know, in this, today we have, my view is it probably will literally the next 10 or 15 years save a lot of diseases, cancers, have new composite materials, your airplanes, your engines, you know, 45,000 people a year killed in the streets and, you know, 150,000 crippled. That number could be cut by 80%. So, you know, I think the generation, you know, 30 years now, they'll probably be working four or three and a half days a week. They'll have an income of per person of $300,000. It'll be a great life. And I just, that's the good part. And I think there's truth to that. And it's also true that there's a bad part. And I'm not going to do the jobs part, unless you want me to. But the bad part is the risk that some of these things now pose on creating, you all have systems. You all use applications. We use 7,000 applications, a lot of open source code. There are hundreds of thousands of open source code. And these things are so powerful now that you thought you didn't have no vulnerabilities. And you run this through your own code. And there are hundreds of significant vulnerabilities. And so for JP Morgan, you know, we spent a lot of money in cyber. We're very well protected. You're probably up there with the best in the world. And a lot of the banks are, but there are industries completely unprotected. You know, you guys are probably pretty well protected. But then you have vendors who aren't. Absolutely. And there are industries that like water. Zero. Certain government institutions, zero. Certain hospitals, zero. So they are hugely vulnerable now to state actors, terrorists, criminals, or just people who hate you. You know, who don't like the company. They don't like the industry. They don't like the party. They don't like the -- and we have to get our hands on that. And where that risk is and how bad it is from -- I don't think it's existential threat. But you're going to see problems, too. Let's roll up our sleeves, which we're doing. We have a lot of people doing it now to fix the problems so that we actually are on top of what those risks they create so we get the good and not the bad. But it is critical. And the government is geared up for this. You know, we -- Jay Clayton, who some of you probably know, was just announced the czar for the government. He's the national director of intelligence. We've been in contact with him. You know, they all know the risk. The government's organized around. They don't know how to deal with either, by the way. So it isn't like they're saying we're on top of this. They're saying we need help. And the help is us. They can't protect all these industries. The industries have to do it. And Scott is on this thing with me called the Alliance for Critical Infrastructure, the CEO of United, which is trying to do it by industry. So that every industry should have its own -- protect yourselves, clean up your own codes, clean up your vendors' codes, help the smaller companies in your industry. Like we have, you know, thousands of banks that we bank who are quite concerned about them. And I am, too. You know, and then you have different vendors. And, you know, the way we look at their 20 industries, you know, we started with six. We're going to go to the other 14. And all these companies are putting real muscle into it at this point. And the government's going to organize around it. But we have to do it in due haste. And this is when we have a common interest with China, because I think China realized this isn't about us versus China. In China, they also have to worry about people who don't like the government, terrorists, state actors who don't like China. Because this could be used against anybody. It could be -- and then it's made worse, by the way, by these agents. So have you ever read about the agents? Muse and Instinct and all that. So now this AI creates, you know, little -- we call them persistent agents -- that they're always looking to attack you. And 24/7. And this agent talks to that agent. And that agent talks to that agent. And if you allow them in your bank, and this is a big issue for banks, you know, if Muse is trying to get -- they can make payments for you. That means you have to give them your bank code. That means they are in your bank. And you're assuming they're going to act properly on your behalf. And they may not. And of course, they may do things inside a bank, which is treacherous for the bank, too. So these are big deals. And I don't know how we can deal with them all over the -- roll up our sleeves and get to work. The government will obviously play a role. You know, there's a big debate about, you know, should it be like the FDA, a government-regulated thing, or like a FINRA, which the securities self-regulated thing, or just industry getting -- and getting at it. And I don't really care. My view is get at it. We'll worry about the legality of it later. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I feel better. [00:44:08] Speaker 1: So, look, we've all seen -- we've seen tech waves, right? There was the internet, we have data centers, we have the cloud. I don't know whether you were out in front on each of these, or a fast follower, or -- but 15, 20 years from now, are we going to look back on this period with the introduction of AI? Are we going to say, yeah, that was another tech wave? Or are we going to look back and say, you know what, that was the equivalent of a second industrial revolution? [00:44:44] Jamie Dimon: Oh, definitely the equivalent of industrial revolution. It's not even close, and very fast. And so, you know, you had industrial revolution, electricity, you had steam engine, you had cars, you had -- those took years to -- well, you had the internet. You know, it took years to come in, to actually have the capital, the fiber, the computers. It took years to invent the iPhone. You know, this is really fast. This is doing stuff today that no one would have imagined was possible, literally five weeks ago. And, you know, and it's going at that pace. So, it's more like a tsunami. It's rolling through the system. And you can't stop some of it. So, it isn't like -- even the regulators said, or the government said, no more. Yeah, well, I hate to tell you, there are hundreds of these things out there. They're on your computer tops. They're open source. There's closed source. There's open source models. You know, China's doing it. A bunch of other countries doing it. You can't stop it. You just have to, like, [00:45:40] Speaker 1: manage the hell out of it. Yeah. Look, just to change gears a bit, I get the sense that you are and have always been focused on good leadership, and that you are probably even evaluating it all the time, in particular within your own company, but possibly outside of your own company as well. What does good leadership look like in your mind? Yeah. Well, let me start with bad leadership, [00:46:10] Jamie Dimon: because everyone knows that one, which is they don't trust the people. They're BSers. They don't share information. It's all about themselves. You know, good leadership runs a gamut. We all have degrees of each one of these things in us. No one is perfect at all of them, but I think, you know, deep analytical skills, which includes curiosity. So a lot of people, they analyze stuff, but they're not curious about the next level, why people do it better. And if you do that well, that's great. You know, and some people are really good at that. Some aren't. It doesn't mean you're going to be a great manager. But a lot of managers out there who, you know, they can't manage the way out of a paper bag. They're unable to have a follow-up list, to be on time, to tell you this is your job, to do this. You know, you look at Ike Eisenhower running the army, the overlord army in D-Day, you know, organized, thoughtful. Every, you know, every piece is taking place. And a lot of people don't do any of that. And even in big companies, even in the government, I've seen mayors and governors, some grow into it, and some are unable to manage anything. And they think, they think it's politics, you know, about getting the potholes filled, you know. And so you see people, they get very organized. And sometimes the people have different skills. There's having a little bit of courage and grit. You know, even in big companies, I'm sure you see this, where people, someone says something, some are controversial. It's like, they're looking around, and they're children. You know, and they're paid millions of dollars. You know, and they're not willing to say, you know, what do you think, and why do you think, and let's, okay, let's go to work on this. And as opposed to, it becomes a political debate. So I say, they get the dead cats on the table. They're willing to say, that isn't the way it works. We should do more work in that. They avoid conflict. You know, and I'm sure everyone sees that. I like to avoid conflict, you know, and particularly on Fridays. Like, just leave me alone, man. Like, you know. But I actually go through this exercise. I write down what the conflict is. I make sure I deal with it next week. And it's easier to avoid. But, you know, the way to deal with conflict is, hey, it's not a conflict. You think X, I think Y. Let's do the work and try to figure it out. There's a truth here. Very often, the truth here. It's hard. You know, this wasn't a bank one story. But I got to J. And I give you a hundred like this. When I got to J.P. Morgan, you know, they thought I was going to come in this tough guy and cut all these expenses. And they've read stories about me. And, you know, I call it waste cutting. I don't like waste of any type. And I will cut it. You know, on the other hand, we spent more money to refurbish the branches and build technology and open for longer hours and teach people how to treat your property and walk in the front door. But a very senior person, I got a phone call from the head of a union. And, you know, of course, the people in the country, you can't see them. You know, they're this and that. I said, I see him. He has to say that. He said, he's going to tape you. You should have lawyers there. You should have security there. I was like, get all that crap. You would know who it is, by the way. He was a tough guy. And he says to me, you know, you guys, I'm here to tell you about something you did that's stupid and unfair and wrong. We did outsource that most in New York. And we might have done it here too. We had outsourced janitors and guards. And he wanted to tell me the reason you outsource is because it's cheaper now. The same person comes back to the same job, literally the same person at the same location, at the same salary. And I checked into this was right. The reason we're saving money is because our benefits package for that guard or janitor was $30,000 a year for medical and pension if they had a family. And they gave them a package worth $15,000. And they gave us back, you know, so we saved seven and a half thousand dollars. They took the other seven and a half thousand dollars as a fee for the service. And when I found out, I went to see the very senior person who did it. And I said, you did, she was very proud of herself. And I said, let me tell you something like that. If you do something like that ever again, I will fire you. And I want those people back on our payroll, giving all the credit for past whatever service they lost in the last year or something like that, that we are not going to build a great company off the backs of our guards and our janitors. You know, and I, and I, and so I'm going to use the word. And the same thing, even, even like how you treat people, you know, everyone, everywhere. And that to me is important. And so, you know, if someone gives a damn, do they return phone calls? They show up, they tell you the truth, they want to get it done. If you really need help, they show up on a Saturday. Do they, and that heart is maybe more important than building a long-term culture than almost anything else you do. And so people give a lot of words to it, but they don't actually do it. And, you know, I, in my office every year, I have janitors and guards and like lots of people come up. I shake their hands. They come to the chairman's office. I give them personal gifts, money because that's what they want, you know, and, no, but like 500 bucks or a thousand bucks, you know, the lady who cleans the toilets, you know, and they cry. They've never been in the chairman's office and they've never were thanked by the chairman of the company. And, you know, that's treating people with respect. So across the full spectrum, you know, anyway, leadership is analytics, detail, discipline, administration, curiosity, heart, honesty, get it done, have a little grit. And the people want you in the room. They want you a part of their team. And then, you know, and actually people get pushed to the top. It's the opposite of what people think. You're sitting around these tables and people say, that person's the right person for this job. I work for that person. And like, and I made all these mistakes early in life. Like I promoted people that I never would want to work for. So think about that for a second. They're really great at what they do. They're best trader, best salesman, best this, but I wouldn't want to work for them. I wanted my kid to work for them. And that obviously in hindsight was a mistake. So there are all these other things. I'll write a book on this one day. Can I just mention something else that's really important because we didn't, you know, we still, we have this security resiliency initiative, which is to do the things to make America secure around rare earth semiconductors. It's doing great. We're doing it with all our allies around the world. I've been to Japan and Korea, Australia, UK, Germany, Italy. So not just here. And you're talking about big money, big investments, a lot of dedicated people with real policy around the shipbuilding ecosystem, which we totally screwed up with that stupid Jones Act. You know, the semiconductor system. You know how much money we save by outsourced mirrors? Anyone want to guess? 500 million dollars. So we are reliant on China to save 500 million dollars on things like magnets that go into your cars and your fighter jets. 500 million dollars. And what we did is disgraceful. But there's another flip side because I mentioned the military and the economy and all the things we need to do to keep the economy strong. And also, I know there are a lot of politicians in the room. So listen closer to me. Okay, because you're going to get these jobs and people are going to bullshit endlessly to the bureaucracy. You can make things better and not spend money or raise any taxes. Okay, and why? It never comes up. You can fix the school systems. We only spend a trillion dollars in K-12. You can fix immigration. That's free. You know, you can do permitting that we do that slows everything down. Litigation costs 1% more than anywhere else. I'm not against it when it's for good, but it's mostly trial lawyers and stuff like that. For free. All for free. I go one policy after another. Collect your taxes. Go after this huge fraud in government. We have to deal with these checks that are being sent out all the time. You know, go after that stuff. But the other part that we fail to do is, and there are lies out there all the time, the middle class is getting smaller. It is not. It's getting poor. It is not. That's just all crap. But what is true, when you look at the facts, that the bottom 20% of our society, or maybe the bottom 25%, has done poorly. And for 20, 30 years. And their incomes didn't go up. They're the ones who don't have medical. They go to crime in the neighborhoods. And their schools suck. You know, they have broken families, more crime, more suicide, more drugs, more recidivism. And so when we as a society, I blame Democrats and Republicans for this, because neither of their policies worked. This is going now intergenerational. And instead of saying, what can we do about it? So here's what I think we should do about it. I think we should rededicate ourselves to what the country stands for. Freedom, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. We should celebrate these virtues here. This is the first nation ever formed on principles, not on tribes. Most nations are tribes. They still don't like each other. This is principles, and they worked. Did we treat all of our citizens great? You know, the black community, the Indian community? Absolutely not. You know, but does that violate these principles, which are the unassailable rights of man? Absolutely. That we should applaud those and teach it and, you know, fix these things. But I do think that the founding fathers didn't make you in the Bill of Rights didn't say you have to be civic, but they expected people to be civic, like lift up your society, do a better job. And so we have this huge effort. I know a lot of your company do too, by the way, around fixing that part too. The American dream is affordable housing. The reason we don't have it is mostly because of regulations. Cheaper mortgages could do it tomorrow, mostly because of the regulations. Work skills, mostly because we've got to get these schools to teach people, here's a skill that'll pay you $45,000 when you get out, and they're everywhere. But we allow, and it should be community colleges too. Immigration, obviously, if we had proper seasonal immigration, other types, you know, we're kicking out 200,000 students a year. We still do have 12 million people applying for immigration in this country every year, but not an uncontrolled border. Permitting, financial education, so we have these branches we now call community centers. We have one in Stoney Island, which I've been to. They're bigger, they're in lower income neighborhoods, we hire locally, the food is local, we advertise local, we train local, but we also invite people to learn about how do you save money for home. And so a lot of the people in this room who don't realize that you were taught that when your mom and dad got you a checkbook. You know, I remember as a kid going and getting that stamp, you know, and all of a sudden I went from having $22 to $22 and 12 cents. I said, there's a God. Like, they invented 12 cents somehow. And, but we have to educate people how to do that, about how to save money, how to, small business formation, which is doing quite well, but it's very hindered by local laws and regulations. And, and we can fix all that. And I just think people should say it's part of my job to fix it. So whatever coming out, whatever you do, and the way you do not fix it is by ignoring government. Now dealing with government is the most painful thing I've ever done. And, but they can't, they are a lot of, they're really bad people involved. There are a lot of good ones too. The good ones actually want to fix this stuff. And they, they don't, I'm not making fun of, they don't necessarily know what to do because they don't do that. So they need ideas and they'd work and they need your people doing it. Like even the school system, you know, that local school needs a local business saying, I, if these kids get these certificates that we help train the teachers and we trust, we'll hire those kids, you know, and you create a real conduit of work. So we need to fix that part too, because that is part of us tearing us apart, that we've failed to, we've left so many people behind the look at the rich getting so rich and, you know, and, and not them. And they're right, by the way. And so that's part of our job. [00:57:29] Speaker 1: I'm going to, I'm going to ask you one last question before we, we end the night. The biggest understatement of the night is to say that you've been a tremendous success. But it hasn't all been easy, right? You have actually faced your fair share of adversity. I mean, you, you had your whole episode with Citigroup. You survived throat cancer. You also survived a massive heart attack, which you went into emergency surgery with no better than a 50% chance of living. You even survived an encounter with a London whale. Can you talk about how- The other two were worse. Can you talk about how these events or others, um, have actually impacted or changed you as a leader [00:58:24] Jamie Dimon: or just as a human being? Yeah. You know, getting fired, not a lot, because I didn't, I was fine. You know, I should have seen it. I just, I didn't see it. And, uh, I got home that night, 50 or 75 people from the company came over with, you know, whiskey and wine and beer and pizza. It was like being in my own wake. And he says, as long as you don't, uh, don't tell Sandy. And, uh, and the London whale, we lost $6 billion. It was quite embarrassing. Uh, and I remember coming down that day and I was coming early because we had this problem we had to fix. And they, the guy runs PR called him and said, uh, going to the basement, you got all the presses outside. So I'm driving in, I'm really tired. I'm getting closer and closer. I said, you know what? I'm not avoiding the press. And when I walked out, you know, I come right over in this swarm and Mr. Diamond, are you gonna lose your job? Are you gonna lose more money? You know, this is terrible. Like the worst ever used to be a paragon of virtue. And now you're like everybody else. I looked at them and said, I looked up at the building and said, I want you to know how proud I am of the six to 7,000 people who work in this building, serving cities, schools, states, hospitals, companies, clients. I walked away because it was a stupid trading loss. You know, people make mistakes. And the other two, the throat and the heart thing, uh, uh, that's different. You know, that makes you, as I tell people, you all know you're gonna die, you know, and some of you probably had, uh, uh, these things, but you know, you're staring at it here. And so I know better than some of you that you're gonna die. And it, sometimes I feel like it's walking by me, like it's right here, death. And, and it didn't change much of what I do. And when I was being wheeled in for that surgery, I was thinking like about regrets. I didn't have many. I had a few, um, because I, I love what I do and I like what I do. I love my family and my kids and I spend as much time as I can. I literally, I'm buying it. But yeah, you paid us a price for these jobs, uh, you know, in multiple different ways. So it would be a lie for me to say that's not true. Uh, but I, I think you do become more deliberate. Like just, you know, just a little, and I read this, another lady wrote this. I called her up. She had cancer. She was in Australia. And I called her up and said, that was a beautiful article. I still get a lot of phone calls from people who had these diseases I had, because they want to know how they're going to get through it. And some are pretty tough. Uh, and you just, you just try to be a little more thoughtful about your life. You know, you, you contemplate that, that everyone's going to wake up tomorrow and you are not there and they will get on, you know, and including your family. And it's hard to think about, but, uh, so you're just a little more thoughtful about everything you do. And it does remind me of that. And, uh, but I, but I do love what I do. I, this is my purpose. I think having the purpose is the same thing. It didn't make me say I have to go smell the flowers. Yeah. You know, I got to take more time off and I spent a lot of time with my family. I mean, if I spent more time with them, they'd probably say, dad, leave us alone. Well, thank you. It's been a real honor. Thank you. Oh, thank you very much. Good luck to everybody. God bless the United States of America.