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

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: 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 JP Morgan what is the biggest threat in your mind [00:00:20] Speaker 2: to that confident vision so every year when I write that letter I try to think of what are the most important things I would add to that the free Western world because I that's what worries me the most is that the Ukraine war the terrorist activities in Israel you know the thread that's drawing between Russia Iran North Korea China the difficulties of our relationship with China that whole thing is challenging but you know we were called a free democratic Western world and that's that to me is the most important thing that we get all that right well I [00:00:48] Speaker 1: want to 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 you have to look a [00:01:07] Speaker 2: little bit in context the consumers in pretty good shape right now unemployment's under four percent has been there for two years they still have excess money from kovid if you go back to looking at the amount of money that was spent during kovid it was six trillion dollars that basically went into consumers pocket through various means and various programs they're still spending it down if you look at the bottom fifty percent of income they pretty much spent the excess so they're kind of back to where they were the top fifty percent still is excess housing prices are up stock prices are up jobs are plentiful wages are fine going up at the low end the consumers in pretty good shape because of that business is in pretty good shape too because people spend it creates profits the one thing you got to be cautious about a lot of is driven by just fiscal spending so even today the deficit is six percent of GDP you know almost two trillion dollars 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 go quite go away people expect I'm not talking about just this year I'm talking about 25 and 26 and 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 [00:02:21] Speaker 1: that could 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 [00:02:34] Speaker 2: you have to look at different consumers here so the bottom 20 percent 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 percent of jobs in America pay $15 an hour or less so yeah there's part of society who's kind of struggling part of society who's not and I think that's a definition about we deal with the policy but 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 worry about politics or about polarization so you have a disconnect about you know economy and as you said [00:03:21] Speaker 1: confidence levels so just to go back to the soft landing in the letter you can see you were on the hawkish side but then things played out in a more benign fashion but you're still is a slightly begrudging concession you yourself sound quite glum in the letter can you tell us a bit more about why that is so I'm not [00:03:36] Speaker 2: looking at a year 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 the remilitarization of the world obviously the deficits which you know basically I'm gonna go away as far as the eye can see and so I it puts me in this 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% etc 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 that just a little cautious it looks a little bit more like the 70s 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 because the today looks okay that tomorrow's gonna [00:04:43] Speaker 1: be okay so just trying to separate the two sticking with today then is Bidenomics working [00:04:49] Speaker 2: partially you know when you spend that kind of money you're gonna have growth and you know I think if you look at Bidenomics yet 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 I think some of the American public looks at it like what are they getting so if you go to rural America or inner cities I'm not sure they feel like they're being lifted up by [00:05:15] Speaker 1: this economy do you think Jerome Powell's doing a good job as chairman of the Fed I [00:05:19] Speaker 2: have a 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 they when someone makes a statement you know we're data dependent we're gonna say we're no matter what the data says we're do we want anyway well you they can't so they should wait and see but they may have to get a little bit tougher and we also don't know the full effective QE I'm again I'm a little more than the cautious side of that you know most people are general feeling that you can reduce the balance sheet by several trillion dollars and it's effective 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 [00:06:08] Speaker 1: ramification in the marketplace I kind of expect that again so if we go back a year JP 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 it helped shape your approach to last year's banking crisis it didn't at all I mean that [00:06:32] Speaker 2: was oh eight was a real crisis Bear Stearns was a much more complicated and so was one 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 etc and so I said it was the last domino provided rates don't go up and there's not a major recession because if that happens obviously it'll affect banks again so it's 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 because people always look at just the financial side of that but in reality ten thousand people on day one had it who were working on future looking projects went to do backward looking projects to consolidate 165 systems rules procedures etc though it was a simpler bank and part of the earnings were just using our own capital liquidity I tell people you don't have to buy a company you know in thousands of people when you can just buy assets 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 good it's doing great you know it's obviously always hard and complex most it will be done by the end of May so you might see some customer complaints can you do that when you do the big complex consolidation systems obviously certain things can go wrong and at a minimum some small things go wrong so [00:07:54] Speaker 1: 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 [00:08:11] Speaker 2: 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 when they look at these civilian deaths and all the things like that so I don't know the specifics of the military I think the notion that they aren't going to defend themselves is wrong so I'll leave the military experts aside we 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 and you know it's door by door a higher amount of civilian casualties you know Hamas must have known there's gonna be quite a reaction to what they did by the way it's unjustifiable for any reason ever so I want to be clear about [00:08:55] Speaker 1: that and then we've got 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 would be it could be again I'm going [00:09:09] Speaker 2: to put odds in this it would could be a potential disaster because you know this is the first war in Europe a free democratic nation invaded by two or three hundred thousand 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 nuclear weapons pretty good thing because people will be afraid of you you know 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 rearming 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 there they say they're neutral whether they're helping or not we are clearly not neutral if Russia 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 going to do and that includes economically so that's why I kind of talk about the economic battlefield and the battlefield so economically every nation to say what makes me secure what makes me secure in energy food all the things I need so I'm a little worried that if Russia wins that war you can see kind of the world kind of enter a little bit of chaos as people realign alliances and economic relationships etc that tell things is after World War two the Bretton Woods Marshall Plan the rebuild of NATO WTO you know all these structures are put in place that actually led to a very safe secure world Pax Americana lifted billions of people out of Pax Americana and basically peace there are a lot of small wars but basically peace among all the major powers you know that if that's torn asunder who knows what's going to 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 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 the need for this new global architecture and it's the kind of big thinking that you know we don't often hear from 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 [00:11:03] Speaker 1: 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. [00:11:12] Speaker 2: I'm not sure it has to be so new. 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, The Exercise of Power, but the 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, American leadership needs, 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 got to 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 geostrategic home run. Economically great, geostrategically great. Our allies would love it and bring everyone close together. And then, you can also negotiate with China from a better position of strength. So you're not trying to keep them out of everything. You just want to 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 [00:12:39] Speaker 1: 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 U.S. to sanction Chinese banks. What do you think of that approach to China? [00:12:59] Speaker 2: How should the U.S. 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 fathers, 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. They're a very complicated neighbor. Their own actions are causing all their neighbors to rearm. 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 of which go through the Red Sea or the Straits 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 with spilled milk. But anything that we need for rare earths, for F-35s, you know, the ingredients for pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, 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, 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. And I don't want to tear asunder the economic relationships either. So we should be very thoughtful. They need oil and gas. So the LNG, I think, is very important strategically. So I would negotiate them around all of that. I'm glad they're doing it. So if you listen to Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan, Janet Yellen, 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 legitimate issues and legitimate complaints and do it as best we can. As long as Ukraine is there and they're doing anything that ain't 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. But they should expect some impact, by the way. [00:15:31] Speaker 1: 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? [00:15:46] Speaker 2: Okay, I'm not going to 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 his 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, uh, [00:16:16] Speaker 1: How about you as one of the experts? I know you were sure your name has come up in the context of [00:16:20] Speaker 2: a new Fed chairman. I would not do Fed chairman, treasury secretary. I don't think I'd ever be picked [00:16:25] Speaker 1: for that. So you travel a lot. You talk to a lot of people around the world. What are they saying? What are you hearing from the rest of the world about the forthcoming election? [00:16:34] Speaker 2: Most of them understand how important it is for Pax Americana and how important Pax Americana is for them and how device it could be for them. They want it to be mature, polite. They want it to be all encompassing. They want it 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 hand out, a lot of people are going to take that hand. And, you know, even the not 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. That is the fight for democracy. I hope Americans learn the world is not a safe place. We need a very strong military. That should be a sine qua non. And that if that doesn't go right there, that's going to 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 we, you know, we've learned lessons. We learned them in 1941. We learned them in 1917. We will learn them again. [00:17:31] Speaker 1: 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. Is that what do you make of that? [00:17:44] Speaker 2: Look, 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 because they think the growth is better or regulations are better or America first or defended. They all have different reasons. I think people should learn to listen more, take a deep breath, try to think as a citizen and think about what's good for the long term health of the country. And [00:18:09] Speaker 1: 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 [00:18:19] Speaker 2: in the U.S.? People are worried. You know, like you pointed out, the economy is pretty good, but they're still worried. And like I said, there are legitimate reasons that there are groups of people who 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 them more. Now why are inner city schools failing? Why are, you know, why, why have incomes didn't go up for 20 years? America grew at one, I think two percent, a little less than two percent 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, for kids that wherever you graduate high school, if you graduate high school, even if you don't graduate, that you have skills to 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, and he, 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 is. 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. [00:19:39] Speaker 1: 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 with your aortic tear. And before that, you'd had a big cancer scare. How did those experiences change you? [00:20:00] Speaker 2: The cancer scare was cancer. Yeah. I don't know. I probably have a little PTSD from all of them. And I think the, it's hard to say, but you obviously, I'm going to use a word, but I got it from another, a reporter, Julia Baird from, I read it. Something she wrote in Australia about you live, you try to live life a little more deliberately. So nothing, it's not like I 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 it a little bit. And I still go into denial. Like, and then someone reminds me, I said, 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 I, you know, because people always said, do you have regrets? I said, no, I love my family. And unfortunately, they were all there. But no, the only thing I would say, I do want to 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 [00:21:09] Speaker 1: 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? [00:21:20] Speaker 2: 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 we already, 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, what is it, 25% on one day in 1987. So I was kind of used to that. And so the risk committee used to meet once a week, it 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 them up, have them wait outside." And they would meet at 5 a.m., 10 a.m., 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 helped thousands of clients through this crisis, even before Bear Stearns and WAMU, and including governments, 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 be there. I basically spent the next three days twiddling my thumb, but I had to be there. 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. [00:22:46] Speaker 1: And now, I mean, there's 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 going to influence your business? [00:22:56] Speaker 2: I think a lot. So I think AI is a real thing. So, you know, and I don't know if it's going to grow like this, we're kind of straight line, and I think people are wasting too much time guessing that. We have 2,000 people already doing it. We have 100 people or so involved just in research on AI, synthetic data, you know, looking at that. 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 in trading, credit cards, consumer, asset management, etc. We run 400 use cases already. We're testing LLMs on our own data. We're testing LLMs 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. It doesn't go through any person. We know what happened. And so it's real. And we should learn it. And to me, it's just to, and also every time we meet as a management team, every business, what are you doing? What are you doing? So the other trick isn't the technology. It'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 where you are when 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 us 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 going to change the world. Your kids' kids will probably live to 100 and 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, you know, steam engines and fire, burnt down buildings, you know, and then we've had fire engines. And so it's going to be used and it's [00:25:35] Speaker 1: going to be kind of exceptional. Have you used it yet? Yes. Yes. With mixed results, but like you. [00:25:41] Speaker 2: 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 J.B. Morden. 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, you won't know the names, we won't give you the data, these kinds of people to make this kind of offer. And you know, at one point we'll be doing more of [00:26:16] Speaker 1: that. So this is the absolute latest, the most cutting edge bit of digital technology that you're talking about, how the world's going to change. But at the same time, you're busy building out something very old fashioned, uh, branches, physical bricks and mortar branches in hard to reach [00:26:32] Speaker 2: communities. What's that all about? Yeah. So I got to bank one in 2000 and JPO in 2004, it was like, it was clicks, not bricks. People were closing branches 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 because 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, 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, it 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 the branch, we also end up with private banking business and small businesses. We help the local community. They like that, you know, so it's got benefit. And so the community branch we're opening, we have 16 of them. They're bigger. We hire locally. So in the Bronx, 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, gaining a mortgage, starting 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 actually local, very local press that, you know, gets the word out. And they've been great. And then we started community managers. So every branch had a branch manager. These branches have 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 are outreaching the community and, you know, and generating business. [00:28:39] Speaker 1: So what do you ask the managers when you go to visit them? [00:28:43] Speaker 2: Who's walking in? What's working? What's not working? What's slowing you down? I always love to ask, what's the bureaucratic 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 you want, what would you do differently? You know, sometimes you get ideas like, why change 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. It spawned work skills initiatives. It spawned the Detroit Service Corps. It spawned virtual call centers because of what we did in Detroit. So now we're doing that in cities around the world. And so, uh, you learn a lot when [00:29:26] Speaker 1: you get out on 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 to check some [00:29:35] Speaker 2: balances. Who keeps you in check? Well, my wife would probably say I do. Uh, and she does. Uh, but I look, 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 or you missed this major point. So it's a, 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 want to 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 them come in and say, Jamie, you're making a mistake. Sit down. We want to 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, divide 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. [00:30:45] Speaker 1: Just to bring it back to what's going on now, the current news cycle with this, 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? [00:30:58] Speaker 2: 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 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 ups and you got to 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 would agree with the others. So we're being asked to make a binary decision. I said, no, that's 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 them generally, you know, are free, fair and safe. And so you got to be a little careful. But when it comes to defending our people, absolutely we're going to do it. When it comes to lifting up other parts of society, absolutely. We think lifting up, you know, parts of community. I remind people, JP Morgan reaches out. We're in 100 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 we use Detroit as an 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 on, which 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, the CEO of Jobs Council in New York trying to get, you know, and we've helped hire, you know, 30, 40,000 kids out of 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, I think it's important to 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 [00:33:19] Speaker 1: policy as appropriate. So you're often asked, when are you going to retire? And your answer is often, in five years. So is 2029 the year? No, I stopped saying that. So first of all, it's totally up to [00:33:31] Speaker 2: the board. We've got wonderful people. We've always, we've always said I'm one of the few people has a president in place who could take over tomorrow. Not many people can say that. And if you spoke to the people who know the company, they would say there are four or five people, they would be very comfortable 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 and my 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 birch. [00:34:10] Speaker 1: So I've got some final questions here. They're short questions that require short answers. [00:34:15] Speaker 2: 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's very job specific. Are America's downtowns dead? No. I think some are going to have difficulty because of their own policies, but no. If you're a young person [00:34:33] Speaker 1: and you want to work at J.P. Morgan, what should you study at college? It almost doesn't matter, [00:34:37] Speaker 2: to tell you the truth, because you're looking for smart, ethical, decent people if you took history or not. But I do think in business, you should learn the language of business, which is accounting, and learn a little basic business. So I think it would help to do accounting, finance, markets, [00:34:50] Speaker 1: something like that. On the rare occasion that you take a day off, what do you do? [00:34:54] Speaker 2: Some of my daughters have said, 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 them, 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. I just started playing squash again, which I'm still worried about, but I'm going to do it. But I was doing it with my 10-year-old granddaughter. So you say you love music. [00:35:23] Speaker 1: Any particular type of music? Almost all. All? Yeah. Eclectic. Rock, jazz. Jazz is the [00:35:29] Speaker 2: only one I don't, but I don't, I just don't, it doesn't resonate for some reason. But I grew up with classical. I grew up playing classical piano. I can play the guitar a little bit. I'm going to pick that up again soon, too, by the way. So I love Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Rolling Stones, Beatles, you name it. [00:35:43] Speaker 1: What's your morning routine? [00:35:45] Speaker 2: Okay. I wake up usually at 4:30 or 5:00. I read five papers you'll be happy to hear in a very specific form. So I flick through the post because 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. Then I read the New York Times front section beginning to end, all of it. Will I like what they're saying or not? I read their business section, which isn't so 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 U.S. And, you know, we operate in 100 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. It takes me an hour. Then I do a lot of other reading, by the way, both internal mail, axios, you know, politico, uh, stuff like that. So I like reading. I like, I'll do it for hours in the morning, but then I like to get a little exercise and go into office. 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, uh, I think people should spend a little bit of time in that, a little more time thinking. Uh, I haven't done podcasts. I, when I, in my exercise, I'm either doing music or watching some stupid show, uh, or something like that. So, um, but I'm not, I'm not on any social media. Uh, 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, and then I click out of it. Never tempted. No. Good. Well, Jamie Dimon, thank you very much indeed. It was a pleasure. Thank you.