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I’m in New York at the JPMorgan Chase headquarters, and my guest today is Jamie Dimon. Jamie Dimon, good to have you on FT video. You are one of the most influential voices in corporate America. And JPMorgan Chase, of course, is the largest bank on Wall Street and Main Street.
Last week, President Trump cited your comments as influential in his decision to pause some tariffs. What advice would you have for the Chinese authorities now to ease the trade war? What would you be telling them?
Yeah, first of all, welcome. I’m thrilled to be here. I do read the FT every single day and I have for two or three decades at this point. And so I try to just be honest about everything we think. I try to do deep work and deep analysis.
And there’s a section in my chairman’s letter about China. I think China, in reality, has done a lot of good things for its own nation. I don’t agree with autocratic dictatorships, etc, but they lifted a nation that had a GDP per person of $400 to $15,000. That compares to $85,000 of America.
But there are legitimate complaints that people have around China. Like, if you look at their neighbourhood, very complex neighbourhood, but they are scaring Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, etc. And so they should look at themselves and look at where there are legitimate complaints about trade. A lot of nations around the world think that they’ve been dumping excess capacity on their nations. And they should look at all of that.
And what I said in my letter is that America shouldn’t be afraid. America has a wonderfully strong hand with all of our freedoms and prosperous nation, etc. that I think we should work with our allies, which is exactly what China doesn’t want. But I think China and America should engage. And they’ve started to, but right now they’re not talking very much.
So I think the first thing you do when you sit down with anyone is… I think the first thing you do when you sit down is say, how’s your family? What are your objectives? We all have common interests. And…
Do you think the president should call Xi Jinping and ask about his family?
I’m going to leave it up to them how they go about it. But I don’t want to get into the tit-for-tat type of thing. I think adults should talk to each other and listen to each other and acknowledge when the other person is right, or at least has a good point.
I did notice in your letter that you called for respectful, strong, and consistent engagement with China. But that’s not where we are today, is it?
I don’t think we have any engagement right now, and so – but that can start tomorrow. So, it doesn’t have to – it doesn’t have to be – it doesn’t have to wait a year. It could start tomorrow. You start with a phone call. Either president can assign it to someone to call them up and go see them. We’ve done that with Iran, which I think is good.
Do you think that a decoupling by the US is possible? Is it possible to decouple from China today?
Well, I think over time, it’s definitely possible, if you said that’s what our objective is. I don’t think that should be the objective. I think from the United States’ standpoint, my objective would be anything that relates to national security, obviously, America should rely on itself or our close allies for that. We didn’t. And that’s kind of a shame, and I’m surprised.
Anything that’s about really unfair trade, that should be dealt with. That’s true with a lot of nations. There’s a lot of unfair trade all over the place that’s been going on for 100 different years. But a lot of things don’t matter as much – where you get your textiles made or your footwear or your furniture.
So I think we should be clear-eyed about what we’re trying to accomplish. And I also think we should do it with allies. And I think if the western world… I would want to negotiate eventually with Europe, with the UK, with Japan, Korea, Australia, Philippines, and have a very strong economic relationship, and also then face off with China and say, we want to trade with you, but here are the terms of trade that we all think are fair and reasonable.
I think your whole point about alliances was something that you made very clear in your very good letter. There is a feeling, when I talk to people around the world, governments and businesses, that today it is the US itself that is undermining the post-world order that it has created. How do you get around that? What do you think should happen now?
Yeah, so I think the most important thing is that we don’t read a book in 40 years: ‘How the West was Lost’. And so I think it’s one thing for any nation or the United States to say, I think this is unfair around trade, around the cost of military. I think there’s some very good points, which I think Europe knows that they need to spend more on their military. But that does not mean we shouldn’t have a military alliance with you all, Europe in general.
And same with the economy. They need to do more. The GDP per person in Europe has dropped from something, like, 70 per cent of America to, like, 50 per cent. That’s not sustainable. I think Europe has already recognised it needs to change its own rules, regulations, and guidelines if they want to grow faster. And I think that’s true. But it should be done with us. The goal should be, in my view, to strengthen Europe and get them closer, not to get them weaker and get them further.
So I think fragmentation in the world is a bad idea, fragmentation in the western world. And you can end up with a world that looks like before World War One or World War Two, with almost every nation for themselves, trying to figure out how they’re going to protect themselves. And unfortunately, that might lead to proliferation of nuclear weapons.
What are the consequences for JPMorgan Chase of this potential fragmentation?
Well, I think from a company standpoint is that Warren Buffett talks about the resiliency of America, if you just invested in America. I think that’s been true. But part of… for any company here and a lot of companies around the… western companies around the world, having a strong America has been good for them, and having a strong western world has been good for them. So if that wasn’t true, I think it would put us in a much more weakened state. I’m talking about over 40 or 50 years, not the next three years or so.
Let’s talk about the markets, because JPMorgan is a big trader in Treasuries. And I’d like to hear your understanding of what happened in the Treasuries market last week. Who was selling? To what extent was this episode? To what extent did it show vulnerability to leverage hedge funds, like on the basis trade, for example?
Yeah, I don’t personally think that’s the big issue. There is leverage in the system. There’s always leverage in the system. And there clearly was hedge fund deleveraging, which caused some of this. I think the real issue is, there’s ongoing uncertainty around tariffs, potential retaliation, how you can restructure your manufacturing supply chains, if you are able to do that.
I think those things are far more important. And obviously, it was dollar weakness and 10-year bond weakness. It was a result of that. But it happens in the short run. Of course, you have deleveraging. And that may be somewhat over for now. We’ll see.
You didn’t see anything disorderly in the markets last week.
It was disorderly to the extent that it was a rapid move and stuff like that. But it wasn’t… no, we saw most of the markets were fine. But credit spreads gapped out. If you look at what it means to the world, volatile markets, I point out it’s not bad for JPMorgan, but it is bad for the markets.
And when markets are very volatile, it scares people. They tend to not want to be owners. Credit spreads. They gap out considerably. That means every company raising money is paying more for the money in two ways. One is the absolute rates went up, and the second is credit spreads gapped out. And that will cause some additional stress and strain in the system.
So some economists over the past week, and particularly, with the dollar also falling, have been arguing that there is a loss of faith, a loss of confidence in the US. How worried are you about that? And do you agree?
The US is still the most prosperous nation the world has ever seen. It’s still a haven because of that strength, the rule of law, the strength of America’s economy, innovation, the growth, the United States military, which not just protects America, it protects a good part of the western world.
So it’s still very strong. But yes, a lot of this uncertainty is challenging that a little bit. So you’re going to be reading about this non-stop until, hopefully, these tariffs and trade wars settle down and go away, so people can say, I can rely on America.
So I wrote… in my letter, I wrote America First is OK, but not America Alone. And so if you talk about… and again, I’m not worried about the markets as much as I am about keeping the western world together, free and safe for democracy.
And that, to me, means you want to strengthen the economic relationships. If there’s unfairness, deal with it. But yeah, we should be careful. I mean, I don’t think anyone should assume they have a divine right to success, and therefore, don’t worry about it.
So you can’t take it for granted.
I would never take anything for granted, no.
Do you have faith in Scott Bessent to steer the economy?
Yeah, I hope so. I know him a little bit. I think he’s an adult. I don’t agree with everything the administration is doing, so I’m not arguing that point. But I think he’s the guy who should probably be negotiating these trade agreements.
The thing is they are very complex. There are 12,000 different product lines. There are all these other complexities. There’s trans-shipment. There are taxes, quotas, VATs, guarantees, subsidies. Like I said, it’s been going for 100 years. I hope he has the right people around him who can say, OK, what should we do with Europe? What should we do with Japan? What should we do with Korea?
And I think the sooner they come up with what I call agreements in principle, because they’re not going to be able to negotiate a deal around what makes sense, you could say, for example, with Europe, you need more military equipment, yes, more LNG, yes. Reduce tariffs, yes. We come up with a friendly deal that’s good for Europe and the UK and the United States. Is that possible? I think so. And I’m hoping they’re working on something like that. But I don’t know that. I have no more information about it.
So you can’t tell us that within three months, the whole issue of tariffs and trade will be…
I can’t. But I think…
…behind us.
I can’t. But if it isn’t, I think it will just be causing more consternation.
You had a great 2024. You exceeded analysts’ expectations also in the first quarter. But you did warn about uncertainty on investment banking and the pipeline of deals. So there is some evidence of investors sitting on their hands. What do you think would reassure investors? What do you need to see?
I spend no time trying to reassure investors, OK? Nor do I care that much about a year’s results or quarter’s results. I write over and over…
Not you. I mean, what do you need…
No, I write over and over that…
…to see around you?
…profits are… they’re a tip of an iceberg, and they’re kind of ephemeral. And there are good revenues and bad revenues. People get very confused about what makes you a strong company. So the result in 2024 were because of the things we’ve done over the last 15 years. It’s not because of what you did in, actually, 2024.
But there’s no question – and we see it now, and we’re actually starting to survey clients – that clients are cutting a little bit back on investing. M&A has dropped. M&A in middle market, it kind of dried up a little bit. Foreign direct investment may come down. So this is, like, real-time. We don’t really know. It’s more anecdotal. But in this case, the anecdotes may be accurate, that you’ll actually see some data going forward.
But I always tell people, and they always say leave us with a good taste in our mouth or a positive. I don’t find it my job to have to do that. I simply try to describe the world as it is, not the… I describe the world I want. I got to deal with the world as it is. So we’ve had ups and downs before. We’ve had recessions before. I’m not as worried about that as I am about the bigger issue we’ve already spoke about.
It just feels that today – last week, you said recession, 50/50. It’s almost every day you have to assess the risk of recession. And that’s really hard if you’re a business planning on investing – making any decision, really.
Yeah, so you have to separate two things. So you never know the future. So if you’re a business person, you know there might be a chance for recession. And I think it’s almost a waste of time to constantly be doing that every single day.
And when you build a company or a ship or any… you’ve got to say, OK, I have to deal with this whole range of outcomes, you know? And I always say, the economy is like the weather. It could be stormy. It could be sunny. You don’t build your company saying, I can only survive in one way. I think some of these other uncertainties, OK, are material. And one has been there for years now, geopolitical. I think trade, tariffs, potential retaliation, the good news from deregulation.
So there are all these things taking place. Will we settle Ukraine? Will we settle a good settlement for the sovereignty of Ukraine, a good settlement for Israel, something with Iran? I don’t know. But I think all of those things create what you’re saying is an abnormal amount of turbulence and kind of forecast and thing. And that might change how you invest your money. That isn’t… you’re not saying, I’m going to change it because of a potential recession. I might change it because I have a completely different point of view about the future.
So the administration makes a distinction between Wall Street and Main Street, and the emphasis is always, well, what’s bad for Wall Street may very well be good for Main Street. You are the largest. JPMorgan Chase is the largest lender. So you have a view from across the country and Main Street. What are you seeing on Main Street?
So first of all, I just… I want to agree. I agree that Main Street is more important than, quote, ‘Wall Street’. And we bank 80mn Americans and 6mn small businesses and cities, schools, states, hospitals, 100 countries. I think the health of those things is far more important than how we view the health of a JPMorgan Morgan or, quote, ‘Wall Street’.
I do object to this Wall Street theme because who is Wall Street? We’re owned by veterans, retirees, pension plans, all around the country. That’s who I represent. And so when you say Wall Street, including all these investors, are you including the institutional investors who represent the veterans and the unions and the Calpers and Calstrs?
So, I mean, it’s symbiotic. Every time a big company makes a plant that hires 5,000 people, it hires 20… usually, outside of that plant, of 20,000 people that appear in small business. And so, to me, it’s just a misnomer when you do it. But the health of the economy, if you grow the economy. I wrote in my letter, if we’re growing at 3 per cent a year over the last 20 years, as opposed to 2 per cent, that’s $15,000 more of GDP. That would have lifted up all of society, and very importantly, the lower income side.
And that’s what people forget. If you grow the economy, they will benefit the most. When you shrink the economy, they actually get hurt the most. And so, to me, yeah, our goal should be getting the whole… I wouldn’t even say the middle class. All of it can do better if we do a good job managing these economies.
But are you starting to see stress on a corporate and consumer level?
Consumer, very little. People are writing about is their credit losses have gone up, but they’ve really normalised. They can continue to get worse. They’ve normalised. Jobs are still there. Consumers don’t have all the extra money from Covid but they’re still spending. It’s hard to tell how much is buying forward because they’re worried about tariffs. But car sales clearly went up in the last couple of weeks.
But usually, the consumer has stress when there’s unemployment. So you’re going to see that when I see that. And then you’re going to see credit losses go up and home prices, all things being equal, come down versus what they might have been, etc. And businesses are still doing fine, and they’re earning money. But I think all bets are off now.
So what you’re going to see in the next three or four months is company after company report its earnings. And they’re going to tell you what they think about what the tariffs do to them, sales, their consumers. You’re going to hear some companies probably will feel they’ll be in a lot of stress. Some may benefit from all this. So it’s not clear. But I think you’re going to see, kind of in real-time, what people think about it. And so…
So no stress yet, but stress to be expected?
Stress up here. A lot of… there’s not a business person I speak to who doesn’t feel a little stressed, trying to figure out what this all means.
So you remember Davos. It was just a few weeks ago, really, a couple of months ago. I think my observation and a lot of people’s observation then was that it was peak optimism for US business. Everyone was excited about taxes, deregulation. Everyone was playing down all of the potential downside. Did…
I wasn’t one of those, by the way. So go ahead.
OK, that’s good to know. Although you did make some statements that surprised a few people there.
But do you think corporate America and Wall Street underestimated the revolutionary nature of this administration?
Yes, I do. Yeah, and I remember… I always say with American exceptionalism, there’s a really big but. And the but is that we borrowed, since Covid, for five years, we borrowed and spent $11tn. And that $11tn showed up in the hands of consumers. They had a lot of excess cash. Credit losses came down. They spent a lot of that. It created some of the inflation. It created growth. It also created corporate profits. It’s a big but.
So we still have a deficit of $2tn a year. That’s still a big but. Like, when you’re spending that kind of money, there’s another side to that mound, and there probably is. So yeah, I think America’s exceptional, but it wasn’t quite that exceptional. If Europe, for example, had borrowed another trillion dollars and spent it, their GDP probably would have been a trillion dollars higher. But they would have had that same but. They did the same thing, just not to the extent of the United States, so.
But I think there was a little too much exuberance back then. I thought so at the time. And I think when they announced the Liberation Day tariffs, they were dramatically different than people expected. I mean, way off the table than what people expected. And that was shocking to the system. I mean, the global system, not just in the United States. And of course, some have been already pulled back.
Well, it’s unclear what’s coming, what’s going. We seem to be going sort of… living day by day. Do you think that there is a grand plan here? Is there… I often hear administration officials talk about a transition. What is the destination? Is there a particular destination here?
I don’t know. I mean, you really have to ask them. And so, like I said, I’m hoping that the destination… I understand we need to reshore certain things. And I think that’s true. And I think we need to protect national security.
Some reshoring.
Reshoring, particularly around national security, unfair trade. But we have a lot of advanced manufacturing here. In fact, we’re doing work today about what is manufacturing. Manufacturing includes footwear, textiles, furniture, low value, like putting together toasters, all the way to some of the highest value stuff in the world, and you should be very thoughtful about that. So to the extent that those things need to be fixed, they should be fixed.
The goal should be, in my view, to strengthen the global alliances, help Europe get through its issues. Maybe point out their flaws, but help them get through it. Acknowledge that it wasn’t always one way.
When I go to Europe, I get a lot of complaints sometimes about you guys also do this. And that’s true. It was not a one-way street. And so I hope cooler heads prevail. We accomplish, the president accomplishes what he wants to, but we keep the western world together, militarily and economically. That, to me, is the only super important thing.
So when you talk to… when I talk to… businesses in Europe today, one of their questions is, what is… why is the business community in the US, why is corporate America not speaking out, resisting more? I know you have – you’ve spoken out, and it’s – as we said last week, obviously, you had an impact. But is there a bigger role here for the business community?
I’m not sure I’ve had an impact, but… because they speak to hundreds of people. And so when you say that, I think a lot of business people are speaking to the president and the administration with constant feedback. And I think when you do that you have to say what’s good for your country. You can’t be the globalist and it’s all about your profits. Because then their first reaction is going to be, no, thank you. And I don’t blame them. But I think they’re getting a lot of feedback.
When people say ‘the business community.’ if you spoke to the business community, their opinions are all over the place. It hasn’t coalesced in one place. And some people want to support some of the objectives of deregulation. They think that’s going to be a very good thing.
And some companies are going to benefit from tariffs. Some will be hurt from tariffs. Exemptions are being made, some legitimately. And I hope it doesn’t end up being the corporate trough… everyone’s going to feed in their corporate trough. I don’t know how you deal with all those phone calls.
But one day there might be a coalescing feeling about we should be doing A, B, and C, and not D, E, and F. And so I know a lot of business people are talking to each other, and there is consternation.
And plus the other thing is business people generally, I would say, are in the patriotic side. They want to help a president do a good job for their country. Just like your business people probably want to help your prime minister do a good job for your country.
So let me ask you a couple of questions about the bank because you’re very sort of old fashioned and very futuristic at the same time, old fashioned in the sense that you really believe in branches. One of my biggest frustrations is I can’t find a bank branch any more in London, and you are still expanding. Explain to me why. Why do you think this is so important, at a time when digital banking is growing a lot as well?
So I’m not old fashioned.
Yes.
If it works for the client, that’s what we do. If it didn’t work for the client, I wouldn’t do it. I mean, we’re always forward-looking. Like, what do they want?
So the client… I think a million people, almost a million people a day visit our branches. They want our branches. We open accounting branches. We educate them in branches. Small businesses use the branches. Private clients use the branches. Middle market clients use the branches. So we want our branches. And if they weren’t working, I’d close them.
We also are hugely digital. I mean, I think almost 80mn people use various digital things. So giving people more of what they want – some physical locations, online trading, online payments, online data, wealth management. We try to serve the client and look at the world from the point of view of the client, whether it’s the corporate client or consumer client.
And to do that, you have to be forward-looking, but also very analytical. It isn’t about what I want. It isn’t about… when people say branches are going to disappear. We don’t have to guess. We do a lot of analytics to say what works and what doesn’t work and why?
So you’re also described what JPMorgan’s described as the Nvidia of banking. You’ve invested early and a lot in AI. You’ve developed your own LLM as well. Did you think you needed a cultural transformation for your employees to just take this up and accept it?
No, I didn’t.
Did it require a cultural transformation?
No, I don’t look at it that way. I look at it… any company is always growing and morphing and changing and learning. And if you’re not, you’re not going to do well. And if you look at the failure of companies, it’s often complacence, arrogance, bureaucracy. You think you’re so good that you forget to actually look at what’s happening out there.
So, to me, we’ve always used technology to make it better, make things better, faster, quicker, cheaper for clients. That technology was digital. We’ve always been big analytics. We started using… and then AI was, I think 12 years ago, we started using it.
Again, it’s all about what works for the client? How can you make it work better for your banker or for your employee to do something better for a client? So that should be a constant state of affairs at a company.
But how do you judge whether the money’s been well spent? What are the metrics that you use?
OK. So we divide it – first of all, I always – if you look at my management learning class, there’s good expense and bad expense. I always tell people we expense the building of a branch, and it’s a negative for a while, and then it earns money. I call that an investment. I don’t care that accountants call it an expense.
There’s also bad revenues. What are these revenues? No. A bad loan is bad revenues. So you have to actually go deeper to figure out what you’re doing that makes sense.
But when you’re talking about technology or AI, everything – every project is identified – what it hopes to accomplish, and how it hopes to accomplish, the timetables, the money we’re going to spend. And for a lot of them, I call it NPV. You look at the returns.
We know we put $200mn in this risk – I think it was $200mn in risk application, a big AI one. And it’s reducing risk and fraud losses by $100mn to $200mn a year. That’s a great return. And that’s why our costs have been going down and not going up in a lot of areas. So we’ve used AI for risk, fraud, marketing, errors, customer agents, you name it. Some are identifiable.
There are certain things we do, I don’t even try to justify it, like getting your data into a more usable platform. To me, it’s just table stakes. Just do it.
I remember we were doing digital account opening. People wanted to take all the time to analyse, is it going to be worthwhile? It’s going to cost a lot of money to build, to integrate into our systems. And we’re going to gain this and lose that and it’ll save space.
And I was like, forget all that. The analysis will never be right. Customers are going to want it. Just do it. So there’s no NPV on that. So we do everything and say, forget that. This is a better thing for customers. Just do it, and we’ll be OK.
When you look at the huge AI investments that we’ve seen, especially in data centres, do you think that there’s an AI investment bubble? Do you think the investors are actually going to make money? Because it’s still very unclear.
First of all, to me, that’s an issue. I want to use it to do the best we can for our clients. I’m not as concerned about open models or closed models or this chip or that chip or permissioned or not permissioned. Just use it.
And we’re going to be using all those things. As you already mentioned, we use LLM on our own data. Soon, you’re going to be able to use it in our data combined with outside data without leaking our data, which is very important. We have to maintain proper controls of that.
Yeah, there’s – I think some of these things won’t go – will be bad. You had the internet bubble of 2000. I think some will do well. So I don’t think it’s like one size will fit all.
But there is a lot of money going into it, and you’re going to see a lot of assumptions made that are wrong, like how much it costs to do inferencing. Do you have to use large language models when a small language model can work?
There are a lot of things we do, the large language model takes too long. You cannot do it. So you have to use much more limited models, much more limited inference, much more limited database, but you still get 90 per cent of the benefit.
Let me ask you about a few fun facts about Jamie Dimon. First, and I’m sure you’re very used to this question. But you’ve run the bank for what, 20… almost 20 years. Last year you said your timeline is less than five years. When you think about who’s going to follow you as CEO, I know that there are a few candidates. What qualities are you looking for?
So first of all, it’s the board. I mean, they… obviously, I’m part of that, and they’re going to rely on me a lot. But it’s the board. It’s the board. It’s the board. We speak about it every time. And we have been for years.
The board, so your listeners know, they meet every single time without me. So we have… and I think it’s the most… if you ask me the one most important governance change with all the stupid stuff we had to do, board should meet alone without the CEO. And I think that creates a certain amount of independence and thought and challenging.
And I’ve been doing it since I was running CEO of Bank One, way before it was required. Even today, it’s only required once a year. And they know the whole management team. So it’s not like they’re hearing from me. I have never done a presentation at the board. It’s always done by other people.
They come… we have a board meeting today, like five or six of the top people… not just direct reports. People below that are going to come to dinner. That’s how the board gets comfortable. Who are they? What do you do? How does the place run? Does it actually do what it says it’s going to do?
But I’ll tell you the qualities, and we’ve analysed good succession and bad successions. I think it’s a mistake when people say, we’re really looking for someone who’s, in the future, strong in technology, or we’re looking for a marketing person. You better get the full, complete person.
And so you want a person who’s… you want a person who’s analytical and detailed, and they run things well. They’re administered. But I think the most important ones are heart. They give a damn, and people know it.
Curiosity… they’re constantly either here or on the road asking what works, what doesn’t work, which is a form of humility, by the way. I don’t know. Please explain that to me. I didn’t understand. What should we do about it?
A little bit of grit… they have to take a lot of body blows in these jobs. But you just keep on going. And you have a… your vision. And you further the vision by people see your actions. You do what you say. You say what you do. When you hear about bureaucracy, you get on the phone and you do something about it. You make it fun for people.
And so all these various things – courage and grit and heart and capability – and all human beings are a mix of these things. You can’t pluck out one, and you’re not perfect at any one of them. And they form teams.
The people who becomes friends of Jamie, that always ends up being a disaster. And I also… I’ll make fun of one more thing. When people say, you need a transformative leader. Sell the stock.
Leaders should come in, walk in the shoes of the people there, understand. Constantly observe competitors and issues. Constantly question. Be a sceptic, but not a cynic. Make everyone who walks in the room of all types and persuasions feel they want to contribute, and that you actually mean, what do you know that you can help us do a better job for the company, the client, the countries we operate in, etc.
So all these candidates that have been identified, do you think they all have those qualities?
Yeah, varied degrees. And then they all have different jobs. You get to see them operate under different jobs with different levels of pressure and new things. Dealing with new things is always harder.
So I’m not going to ask you who’s going to be the next CEO because it’s not your decision, right? So you do an annual summer tour of branches. In 2024, I think you went to Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, and Arkansas. Where are you going this year?
I think we’re going to do Alabama, Mississippi, something – actually, I haven’t seen it, but it’s something – the new states. We’re opening new branches in those states. So maybe start in New Orleans.
Why do you do this? Why do you do this?
And it’s not a branch tour. It’s a road trip. And we have big lunches for middle market clients, small business clients, CEOs. We’ve done it with the big CEOs in Palm Beach.
We also visit branches and call centres and governors and mayors. And people come and go on the bus in between some of these stops.
What do you get out of this?
I get to see my management team in action. I was going to say on the bus in between we’ve got tellers and branch managers and loan officers. And I always say, so teach us. Tell us – here’s a beer and immunity. Tell us the stupidest things we do.
So you get to see your own people. You find out a lot of stuff about competitors, how well you’re doing in a city, how well your bankers – and it could be the investment bankers – are liked, how we’re not doing enough to help St. Louis X or Omaha Y, and you have fun.
I mean, the bus trip is not completely new. We’ve been doing it for 15 years, but I always did road trips. And I do it… I do the same thing. We go to the UK. We get out and about in not quite the way… we don’t have a retail system there, but you try to meet a lot of people.
Do you have a favourite place that you’ve visited, that you’ve toured?
In the United States?
Yeah.
I like them all. One of the great benefits, particularly off the beaten path, is democracy works. And that local communities, all these cities, the mayor, the governor, business, not for profits, university – they’re all working together to build the river walk, bring in jobs, teach the kids what they need to do for that local business. And that works. Small democracy works. There’s a lot to be learned from that.
Oh, the other thing is quite uplifting – huge innovation in Austin, in Omaha, in Kansas, in St Louis. It’s not just Silicon Valley. And that diaspora of innovation is now also Europe.
So when I go to the UK now, there are huge amount of technology that we do in Glasgow, Dublin, Bournemouth. We’ve had fintech conferences in Paris and in the UK. And I think this technology stuff changes the world for the better.
So speaking of kids, if you were graduating today, would you still go into banking?
Yeah. It’s a…
Not a very convincing…
Here’s what’s great about it. I would, but I understand why people might not want to because it’s always constantly being attacked by various parties and sides. The beauty about it, it is one of the flywheels, spin wheels, that creates these great economies. It’s the meeting of minds and people and capital and distribution of capital.
Capital deployed the right way is meaningful, deployed the wrong way can destroy a country. And that’s not just banks. It’s venture capitalists, private equity. It’s hedge funds. It’s all these various things.
And then when you wake up in the morning, you read the paper, almost everything in there is going to affect you. And people like talking to you at a cocktail party because, what do you think of this, and what do you think of that? Which is different in certain industries. They’re very kind of narrow in their own industry.
So it’s a fascinating field. And it’s high-paced. It’s fast. It’s risky. So yeah, I would go into it. But I understand why some people say, you know what? Give me something that’s a little more comfortable.
Is there anything else you would go into?
I’ve always loved the media, even though I criticise it quite a bit. And there’s a little media thing I may do when I’m done with this job.
Oh, do tell.
Yeah. Well, I’m not going to tell you…
So you could be a competitor.
Yeah, it could be a competitor or an aid. And it’s something I think all the papers should be doing about but I’m not going to tell you what it is right now. So I think media is critical for educating the public. But even more important than that, educating the influencers.
Those influencers could be other press, Senate, administrative officials – I’m talking about around the world – politicians, the politicians’ staff. And that’s where they get a lot of their information from, which is why sometimes they get critical. They spend a little more time understanding the issue before they make it binary. And then just say stuff that just fundamentally is not true and misleading.
You read a lot of history. What are you currently… what are you reading now?
The last book I read was about Eisenhower. I have tons of books by my bed, but I’ve been really, really busy with these little crises, writing that chairman’s letter, etc.
But I do want to point out to the Brits, because it’s just important. And I think this is an appeal to the special relationship because there are articles maybe in your paper and then articles here kind of making fun of the special relationship.
In September 1939, from that moment until America entered the war in December of 1941, the UK stood alone and fought Nazism all by themselves, at great risk to themselves. People don’t understand, even the United States, that the Battle of Britain wasn’t this little short thing. It was many months long. 40,000 people died, and they stood alone. They were strong, and they were waiting for help. And God bless them because the world could look very different if they didn’t do that, and it settled.
Did you ever consider running for president?
Not really.
Not really. But not no.
No, no. It got mentioned to me all the time. I’m sure there’s tons of CEOs get it. And I never seriously considered it. I did ask one person once, what does it even entail?
What were you told?
That you give up your whole life– your family, your this. 12 months on the road raising money and all those things. I was like, I’m just not sure that’s me.
But you work all the time, don’t you?
Yeah. But I…
What do you do to relax?
So I spend a lot of time with my family. And my daughters often say, Dad, you need some hobbies. And I tell them, I do. You. We all go out to dinner. We barbecue. We take vacations together. We used to ski together. I read history books. I like wine. I like music. I like hiking. I can’t play tennis any more, but we used to play tennis together. Those are the things I love.
I’m not into fancy cars, or I don’t do many black ties or red carpets or stuff like that. So on the weekends I go to my… I have a country house. All my kids show up. I have seven grandkids. That’s my hobby.
And I love reading history. So if I have extra time… I haven’t started the podcast yet. So I have tons of them in my phone because people say, you got to listen to these. But when I’m walking alone or on a treadmill or something like that, I like to think. I will listen to music, but I like to think. I don’t like my brain to be filled 100 per cent of the time with people telling me stuff.
Jamie Dimon, thank you.
Roula, thank you.
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