Jamie Dimon on the Economy, U.S.-China, In yet every other country Wars and Extra: Fat Interview | WSJ

– Jamie Dimon, thank youvery much for sitting down with us today. I spent a lot of time thisweekend reading your letter and my biggest takeawayfrom it was that you have a very clear sense ofwhat's good for America, what's good for the economy, and what's good for J.P. Morgan. What is the biggest threat in your mind to that confident vision?.

– So every year when I writethat letter, I try to think of what are the most importantthings, and I would add to that the free Western world,'cause that's what worries me the most is that, youknow the Ukraine War, the terrorist activities inIsrael, you know the thread that that's drawing between Russia,Iran, North Korea, China, the difficulties of our age with China, that whole thing is challenging. But you know, we would call the free.

Democratic Western world and that to me is the most important thing thatwe get all of that right. – Well, I wanna come back tothe geopolitical backdrop in a minute, but right now Iwant to focus specifically on the economy.- Right? – As the chief exec ofAmerica's biggest bank, you have an unrivaled insightinto the financial health of the US consumer. What are people doing withtheir money right now?.

– So you have to look ata little bit of context. The consumer's in prettygood shape right now. Unemployment's under 4% hasbeen there for two years. They still have excess money from Covid. If you go back to lookingat the amount of money that was spent duringCovid, it was $6 trillion that basically wentinto consumer's pockets through various meansand various programs, they're still spending it down.

If you look at the bottom 50% of income, they pretty much spent the excess. So the kind of back to where they were, the top 50% still is excess,housing prices are up, stock prices are up, jobsare plentiful, wages are fine going up at the low end, theconsumer's in pretty good shape because of that businessesare in pretty good shape too, because peoplespend, it creates profits. The one thing you gotta be cautious about,.

A lot of it's driven byjust fiscal spending. – Mm-mm. – So even today, the deficitof 6% of GDP, you know, almost $2 trillion, that'sdriving a lot of this growth. And that will have otherconsequences possibly down the road, you know, called inflation, which may not go away like people expect. So when I look at the range ofpossible outcomes, you know, you can have that soft landing,I'm a little more worried.

That it may not be sosoft and inflation may not quite go away. People expect, I'm nottalking about just this year, I'm talking about 25 and 26. The rates may have togo up a little higher. I'm talking about the 10 yearrate, the five year rate, and you know that we can haveconsequences, so we'll see. – But right now you describea pretty rosy picture and yet we know consumersaren't feeling it.

Why this disconnect?- Yeah. Well you have to look atdifferent consumers here. So the bottom 20% of Americahave not done particularly well over the last 20 years,incomes barely went up. They're actually startingto 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% ofthe jobs in America pay $15 an hour or less. So yeah, there's part of societywho's kind of struggling, there's part of societywho's not and I think that's a different issue about howwe deal with the policy. But you know, you can seewhy that has people upset. And then you see a wholebunch of other things that, you know, people look in the world,.

They're worried about geopolitics, they're worried about politics, they're worry about polarization. So you have a disconnectabout, about, you know, economy and as you said, confidence levels. – So just to go back to thesoft landing in the letter you concede you were on the hawkish side, but then things played outin a more benign fashion. But you are still, it's aslightly begrudging concession.

You yourself sound quiteglum in the letter. – Yeah. – Can you tell us a bitmore about why that is? – Yeah, so I'm not looking at a year and I'm not making aforecast, I'm trying to say what are the range of possible outcomes? And last year and thisyear, I would put out the same issues. Huge amount of fiscaldeficit, huge amount of QE,.

We don't really fullyknow the consequences yet, part of it might be inflation. A lot of things in thefuture. Inflationary, the green economymilitarization of the world, obviously the deficits, which you know, basically aren't gonna go awayas far as the eye can see. And so it puts me in thison the, and geopolitics all that puts me on the side of caution that things may not goas well as people expect.

Again, that's not a 24forecast, I'm cautious. So I think I said in my letter,the odds of a soft landing, the market kind of prices in70%, I think it's half of that. And so therefore the odds ofsomething different, you know, is 65%, et cetera. And so, you know we'll see. But I don't really know, youknow, as a business person, I try to be prepared for all of that, it's just a little cautious,it looks a little bit more.

Like the seventies to me. And I point out to a lot of people, things look pretty rosy in 1972, they were not rosy in 1973. So don't get lulled intoa false sense of security, 'cause the today looks okay,that tomorrow's gonna be okay, so just trying to separate the two. – Sticking with todaythen, is Bidenomics working – Partially?.

You know, when you spendthat kind of money, you're gonna have growth. And you know, I think if youlook at binomics you do have parts of it where we needed some of it, like some of the industrial policy, I think the infrastructurething is terrific, that was bipartisan. You know, other thingswill remain to be seen. So, and I think some of theAmerican public looks at.

It like, what are they getting? – Mm-mm. So if you go to ruralAmerica or inner cities, I'm not sure they feel likethey're being lifted up by this economy. – Do you think JeromePowell's doing a good job as chairman of the Fed? – I have tremendous respectfor Jay, I think the Fed was probably late in raising rates.

They caught up, they'reprobably wait, right? And watching right now, wedon't know what's gonna happen, you might as well wait. It's very hard to forecastthe future, I've always told the Fed they should stop forecasting. I mean, obviously the datadependent, you know when someone makes a statement, youknow we're data dependent. They say “No matter what thedata says we want it anyway.” Well they can't, so theyshould wait and see.

But you know, they may haveto get a little bit tougher and we also don't knowthe full effect of QE. Again, I'm a little more onthe cautious side of that. You know, most peoplehave a general feeling that you can reduce the balancesheet by several trillion dollars and its effect will not be felt. I'm not so sure we've never had it before. So it's never really been tested. And the one time theystarted doing reversing QE.

At one point it didcause some ramification in the marketplace, Ikind of expect that again. – So if we go back a year,J.P. Morgan helped out with the mini banking crisis. Wasn't the first time you'dstepped in at a moment like this because in 2008 of courseyou bought Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual. How did the experience, the2008 experience help shape your approach to lastyear's banking crisis?.

It didn't at all. I mean, that was, 08 was a real crisis, Bear Stearns was a much more complicated and so was WAMU within this one. This was much simpler, wethought it was the last domino because only a handful ofbanks had the same problems of concentrated deposits, toomuch interest rate exposure, et cetera. And so I said it was thelast domino provided rates.

Don't go up and there'snot a major recession, 'cause if that happens, obviouslyit'll affect banks again, so it was a completely different thing. We wouldn't have done it if it didn't help stabilize the system,we would not have done it just for ourselves. I point out in the letter,'cause people always look at just the financial sideof that, but in reality, 10,000 people on dayone who were working on.

Future looking projects,went to do backward looking projects to consolidate 165systems, rules, procedures, et cetera. Though it was a simpler bankand part of the earnings was just using our own capital liquidity. I tell people, you don't haveto buy a company, you know, and thousands of peoplewhen you can just buy assets to do the same thing. So part of it had nothingto do with First Republic.

So the financial results are nice, but we would try to be honestabout where they come from. – So how's the integrationgoing then with the platform? – Good, it's doing great. You know, it's obviouslyalways hard and complex. Most, it would be done by the end of May, so you might see some customer complaints because when you do the bigcomplex consolidation systems, obviously certain things cango wrong and at a minimum.

Some small things go wrong,so by the end of the year it'll be completely done. – Switching tack now to geopolitics, we've got wars going on in the Middle East and in Europe thatcreate an enormous amount of economic uncertainty, if we focus first on the Middle East. Do you think that the USposition towards the Israel-Hamas war is the right one?.

– I think Israel has theright to defend itself, I think war is a terrible thing. I think people have to behonest about what war is, you know, and when theylook at these civilian deaths and all the things like that, so I don't know thespecifics in the military. I think the notion that they aren't gonna defend themselves is wrong. So I'll leave the militaryexperts decide, you know,.

What's the right way to go do that? Every general I see on TV, and I've spoken to several, you know, city conflict is really bad.- Mm-mm. – And you know it's doorby door, higher amount of civilian casualties, youknow Hamas must have known there was gonna be quite areaction to what they did. By the way it's unjustifiablefor any reason ever. so I wanna be clear about that.

– And then we've got a warin Ukraine as well where, you know, Ukraine clearlystruggling against Russia. What would it mean forthe global economy if Russia was to win? – It could be, again, I'mgonna put odds in this, it could be a potential disaster because you know this isthe first war in Europe, free democratic nation invaded by two or 300,000 Russiansoldiers under the threat.

Of nuclear blackmail. So, you know, we've neverhad nuclear blackmail before, which is also teaching the whole world. You know, maybe having a nuclearweapons pretty good thing because people will be afraid of union. You can, you know abuse aneighbor if you feel like it, it would be on the border of NATO. You know, obviously NATOis re-arming right now, but the other thing isaffecting 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 ondifferent sides of that. They say they're neutral,whether they're helping or not, we are clearly not neutral. If Russia wins, I personally,you might see a lot of people deciding that, youknow will America stand up.

For Europe? Can you rely on them? And if you can't rely onthem, what are you gonna do? And that includes economically,so that's why I kind of talk about the economicbattlefield and the battlefield. So economically, every nation should say what makes me secure, whatmakes me secure in energy, food, and all the things I need. So I'm a little worried thatif Russia wins that war,.

You're gonna see kind of the world kind of enter a little bit of chaosas people realign alliances and economic relationships, et cetera. The tell thing is, is afterWorld War II, the Bretton Woods, the Marshall Plan, therebuild of NATO, WTO, all these structures are putin place that actually led to a very safe, secureworld, tax Americana lifted billions of people outtapoverty and basically peace. There are a lot of small wars,.

But basically peace amongall the major powers. You know, if that's torna sunder, who knows what it's gonna be replaced with. – Well, I thought that wasa very interesting part of your letter where you'retalking about the need for this new global architectureand it's the kind of big thinking that, youknow 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 ofwhat you're talking about. – Yeah, so I'm not sure ithas to be so new, just we have to go back and see whatworked and what didn't work. But I look at the Westernworld, economic alliances should be kept together andwe need to help the rest of the world. So, you know Bob Gates writes in his book, “A Symphony of Power” that we've overused.

And maybe misused our military muscle. We've underused economic, intelligence, development, finance, diplomacy,all these other things. So, you know we need American leadership. It should be done with our allies. It can't be done, you knowour 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 wedon'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 traderight, we need to negotiate. I would reenter the TPP. I think our government's gonnastart talking about trade. I remind them we havetrade 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 wouldbe a geo strategic home run, economically great, geostrategically great, our allies will love it andbring everyone closer together. And then you can also negotiate with China from a better position of strength. So you're not trying tokeep it out of everything, you just wanna set it upin a way you think works.

For the free and democratic world and it looks like a lot of these folks would like to destroythat and so we should do everything we can tostop that from happening. – So China's complicated, obviously, because on the one hand wehave so much trade with China, the supply chains are integrated. But at the same time, we reported recently that China is aidingthe Russian War effort.

And there's now a proposal by the US to sanction Chinese banks. What do you think ofthat approach to China? How should the US approach China? – You know, I would tellAmerica, take a deep breath. We have all the foodborneenergy we need, the Atlantic and the Pacific, no wars inNorth America, South America. The gifts of the foundingfollows the power of freedom, which I write about inthere, which is extraordinary.

In terms of people, ideas, innovation, entrepreneurship, 80,000 per person GDP, China imports 11 millionbarrels of oil a day. Their very complicatedneighbor, their own actions are causing all their neighbors to re-arm, Philippines, Japan, Korea,Indonesia, Vietnam, India. Not because of America,that's their own actions, they're scaring their neighbors. Their GDP per person is $15,000versus our 80, you know,.

They have had good innovation, which, you know God bless them. And they rely on 11 millionbarrels of oil a day, I believe half whichgo through the Red Sea or the Traits of Hormuz, which are guarded by American warships. So, you know we're ina very good position. We have to restructure tradearound national security, kind of a no-brainer, likehow we got there, who knows,.

Don't like to cry, but spilled milk. But anything that we needfor rare earth for F35s, you know the ingredientsfor pharmaceuticals, semiconductor, you knowimportant semiconductors and related where it might beused for military purposes, you could put AI in there andlithium and some other things. Obviously we shouldresource friendly source or something like that. I would engage with China, I would have.

Very tough conversation aboutwhat 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 wayor the highway type of thing. So when we did the IRAact, I'm not against it, but it clearly was by Americafor America of America and it really irritated a lot of them. – Mm-mm. – And I don't want to tear us under the.

Economic relationshipseither, so we should be very thoughtful, they need oil and gas. So the L&G I think is veryimportant to you strategically. So I would negotiatethem around all of that and I'm glad they're doing it. So if you listen to TonyBlinken and Jake Sullivan, Janet Young, they're startingto engage and they should, and they should be quiteclear what we need, what we want, and weshould listen to them.

You know, they may havesome legitimate issues and legitimate complaintsand do it as best we can. As long as Ukraine is thereand they're doing anything to aid a bet, I thinkit makes it very hard to have a great relationship with them. And I think you know, thatthis thing in Ukraine is real. And you know, I don'tknow what exactly I saw some of these reports. I'm glad the government has the authority.

To do certain things if infact some of these things are true. Yeah, they should do some sanctions. – Right? – But they should expectsome impact, by the way. – I want to turn now to domestic matters and the forthcoming election. We're in the very unusualposition of knowing what a Trump presidency looks like,.

We know what a Bidenpresidency looks like. Who's the best candidatefor the economy for 2024? – Okay, I'm not gonna go intothat kind of thing right now. And whoever is president, youknow, we will try to help. I really would hope thatwhoever's president tries to reach out to the other side. You know, that Trump would put some Democrats in his cabinet,maybe Biden would put some Republicans in the cabinet.

I would like them to put alot of experts around them. Not just academic, butyou know practitioners in the real world,because I think it matters and to get policies rightthat are good for both America and the world and that'swhat I would hope and so. – How about you as one of the experts? I know you are sure your namehas come up in the context of a new Fed Chairman. – I would not do FedChairman, treasury secretary.

I don't think I'd everbe picked for that, so. – You travel a lot, youtalk to a lot of people around the world. What are you hearing fromthe rest of the world about the forthcoming election? – Most of them understandhow important it's for Pax Americana and howimportant Pax Americana is for them and how divisiveit could be for them. They wanted to be mature, polite.

They want it to be all encompassing. They wanted to help thedeveloping nations in the global South a little bitmore, there's all of that, but they want American leadership. And America has a lot of allies. And if we reach our handout, a lot of people are gonna take that hand. And you know, even thenon-aligned want more of us, so that's what we should bedoing and we should be doing it.

Very intelligently. I think that battle line inUkraine is America first. – Mm-mm. – That is the fight for democracy. I hope America's learned theworld is not a safe place. We need a very strongmilitary that should be a (indistinct) non, and that ifthat doesn't go right there, that gonna get closer to all of our allies and we will have to defend them.

And if we don't defend them,it will be on our shores one day. So you know we've learnedlessons, we learned 'em in 1941, we learned them in 1917,we will learn them again and so I hope we don't. – Still on the election,critics of Donald Trump, they don't just disagree with him, they think he's a threat to stability, he's a threat even to democracy,what do you make of that?.

– I obviously hear all that stuff. We shouldn't ascribeto an individual about why they're voting forDonald Trump or Joe Biden. They're doing it for different reasons than a very simple thing. Some do it 'cause theythink the growth is better, regulations are better orAmerica first or defender, they all different reasons. I think people shouldlearn to listen more.

Take a deep breath, try to,you know, think as a citizen and think about it's goodfor the long-term health of the country and that'swhat I hope people do. – You listen, you go on yourtours around rural America, what do you hear? I've asked you, what do youhear from the rest of the world? What do you hear when yougo out and about in the US? – People are worried, youknow, like you pointed out, the economy's pretty good,but they're still worried.

And like I said, thereare legitimate reasons that their groups of people are angry. Now it doesn't meantheir policies are right, it doesn't mean they're exactly right, but I think we should listen to 'em more. Now why are inner city schools failing? Why have incomes didn'tgo up for 20 years? America grew at one, Ithink a little less than 2% for 20 years.

I think that's anemic, I thinkwe 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 betterjob for kids that wherever you graduate high school,if you graduate high school, even if you don't graduate,that you have skills that get you a job making $50,000 or more. They're all there, it all can be done. They can all be fixed andthere's frustration in my letter,.

I had the letter fromGeorge McGovern about, you know the bureaucracy. He realized he helped createthrough laws and regulations that in his own words thatI passed for good intent, I didn't realize theunintended consequences, what it does for jobsand the ability to hire and the growth of a businessand even litigation. He says it's, you know,frivolous and not everyone who fell in front ofmy hotel was my fault.

And how costly it's likewe're demoralizing people. There are bureaucracy, ourlack of collaboration, I think, you know, demonizing business. I mean, I think there's alot we could do to fix it and so I'm hoping people do it. – Like might you everconsider 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 executiveand obviously there are.

A lot of pressures with the job. You had a near deathexperience about four years ago before.- Yeah. – With your aortic tear and before that you'd had a big cancer scare. How did those experiences change you? – The cancer scare was cancer. – Yeah.- I don't know, I probably have a littlePTSD from all of them.

And I think it's hard tosay, but you obviously, I'm gonna use a word,but I got it from another lay of reporter, Julia Baird I read it, something she wrote in Australia about you try to live life alittle more deliberately. So nothing, it's not likeI'm wanted, I love what I do. I love my job, I love myfamily, 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 thingslike that, but those things do change a little bit. And I still go into denial, like, and then someone remindsme, I say, oh yeah, I did go through that stuff. So when I was being wheeledin the operating room for the dissection, Iknew it was like 50/50 and I didn't have any regrets.

So you know, 'cause people always said, do you have regrets? I said, no, I love myfamily and fortunately they were all there. But no, the only thing I would say, I do wanna help this country and the world and the freeWestern world that is on my mind, maybe that changed a little bit. – Yeah, I mean anothertraumatic moment that you lived.

Through was the 2008 banking crisis for different reasons obviously, but what lessons did youlearn about leadership when you were taking J.P.Morgan through that turmoil? – Yeah, so people askme, what did you learn? I didn't really learn aboutleadership then first of all, it's like you have togo to war with the army you have people say, “Whatdid you do differently?” So I always believed, I alwayslooked at the world like.

Ranges of outcomes I wasalways kind of prepared for. And you know, of courseI grew up on Wall Street and I saw a lot of crisesand we had bankruptcies and we had companies gobankrupt and scares and panics and the market fell, wasit 25% in one day in 1987? So I was kind of used to that. And so the risk committeeused to meet once a week, met five times a day. And instead of it being a little bit more.

Of a structured meeting,it was unstructured. I'd say, Emma, you got a problem. You bring whoever yougot, just don't wait, bring 'em up, have 'em wait outside. And they would meet at 5:00 AM,10:00 AM you know, Asia time and any time call peoplein the middle of the night, people work seven days aweek, client by client. Remember we have thousands ofclients through this crisis, even before Bear Stearnsand WAMU and including.

Governance by the way. So the lesson is be prepared beforehand and have a functioning,you know, risk committees and stuff that all theydo is just do more of it. And I remember flyinghome from Saudi Arabia, city stock was collapsing,I canceled my trip. I got back just to, I just to be there. I basically spent the next three days, twirling my thumb, right?.

But I had to be there.- Yeah. – And so just beingprepared and being ready and also reacting quickly,getting the right people in the room, having theright conversations, taking quick decisions. – And now, I mean there a new, I wouldn't call it a crisis, but there's a new challenge facing banking and that's in the shape of AI.

How do you think that's gonnainfluence your business? – I think there's a lot, soI think AI is a real thing. So, you know, and I don't knowwhat's gonna grow like this. We're kind of straight lineand I think people waste too much time guessing inthat we have 2000 people redoing it. We have a hundred andpeople or so involved just in research on AI, synthetic data, you know looking at data.

And also we put AI and data together because they're directly related. We now have someone atthe management table, a very capable woman whois responsible for both. And then inside each businesswe have mirror groups, you know, AI and data peopleand trading credit cards, consumer, asset management, et cetera. We run 400 use casesalready, we're testing LLMs on our own data.

We're testing LMS on ourdata, plus outside data. It's used for risk, fraud, marketing, idea generation, handling of errors. We're building agents whichactually make decisions. So, you know, you mighthave a customer complaint, we know what it is, it'll actually decide to send you a new debitcard that doesn't go through any person, we know whathappened and so it's real and you, we should learn it.

And to me it's just andalso every time we meet as a management team, everybusiness, what are you doing? Yeah, what are you doing? So the the other trickisn't the technology's getting people saying, how can I use it? And once they start using it,they realize the power of it and it will be exceptional. It'll create jobs, it'lleliminate some jobs, it'll make everyone more productive,.

It'll be used by bad guys. So we already do things like,we recognize your voice, we know who you are andyou enter our systems. We actually identifyyou multiple other ways. Bad guys can take one secondof your voice and replicate it and fool our voice recognition system, so we have to make oursbetter to capture that too. We don't use voice just so yourreaders know to move money. It's just one of manythings we use to make sure.

You're the person you say youare and so it's a big deal. It will change a lot ofthings. I think for health, I think it'll cure cancer. I mean I've already seenthings where it's designed new molecules to hit specific cancer cells in a way the human braincouldn't come up with, you know, it's readingradiology, I think I'm told better than a radiologist can read it now. It'll take data from yourblood from the last 30 years,.

Your RNA, your DNA whichin your blood system, it knows if you had measles and mumps and all these thingsto actually figure out what you might have next andso it's gonna change the world. Your kids kids willprobably live to a hundred, never have cancer, you know? So, and that's a great thing. Technology the other thinghas always done this, it's always done great things for mankind.

With some downside planescrash, drugs are misused. – Yeah. – You know, for steam engines and fire burnt down buildings, you know, and then we fed fire enginesand so it's gonna be used and it's gonna be kind ofexceptional, have you used it yet? – Yes, yes. With mixed results, butlike you it's sloppy. – It's still not good, you can.

– Yeah, but if you all go to Bing or something like that, youcan have it summarize a book, make up a thing, haveidea generation for you and so think of JP Morgan. We have huge amounts of datathat other people don't have that we can use to doa better job for you. Marketing systems, ops, safety, security, idea generation, et cetera. So we announced somethingcalled Chase Media,.

Which is effectively thatyou get to come in, you know, the Wall Street Journal can come in and say, we want to contact these kind, you won't know the names,we won't give you the data. These kinds of people tomake this kind of offer. – Mm-mm. – And you know, at one pointwe'll be doing more of that. – So this is the absolutelatest, the most cutting edge of digital technologythat you're talking about,.

How the world's gonna change. But at the same time,you are busy building out something very old fashioned branches, physical bricksand mortar branches in hard to reach communities,what's that all about? – Yeah, so since I gotto (indistinct) in 2000 and J.P. Morgan in 2004,it was like, it was clicks, not bricks.- Yeah. – People were closing thatwere making a million dollar.

A year profit. Remember the goal inlife isn't to satisfy us because we're guessing about the future. The goal in life is to satisfy you, 'cause you're the customer who uses our products and services. And so we still have almosta million people a day who go to branches, you know, in spiteof digital account opening, you know, of 60% or I'vegot 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 onethat I'm opening in Bronx soon. So in that branch in theold days had 12 people, it was mostly operations,mean checks, cashing money, taking deposits. But now it's advice,small business advice, investment advice, mortgageadvice, 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 webuild a branch, we also end up with private banking businessand small businesses, we help the local community. They like that, you know,so it, it's got benefit. And so the community branchroping, we have 16 of them. They're bigger, we hirelocally, so in the Bronx.

So it's a local community. When we have food orart, it's done locally. The building of the branch,the renovation is done by local people. And then we hold financialeducation classes to teach moms and dads and kids about saving money, gain a mortgage during a business and they've been great andthe communities love them. You know, I'm doing local press,.

So I'll be doing like theAmsterdam news, the Harlem News and wherever you go, they'revery local press that, you know, gets the wordout and they've been great. And then we started the community manager, so every branch had a branch manager. These branches had a communitymanager whose job isn't to run the branch, but togo to the local businesses and little leagues andnot-for-profits and churches and synagogues and invite peoplein and it's been fabulous.

So we now have 150 communitybranches around the country. Community managers whooutreach in the community and you know, and generating business. – What do you ask the managerswhen you go to visit them? – Who's walking in, what'sworking, what's not working? What's slowing you down? I always love to ask,what's the bureaucrat stupid stuff we do? Just lay it on me becauseevery business does,.

And even if you weren't yesterday, you probably invented a new one today. And then we change it,you know, like what works, what would you do if you ran the branch and what would you do differently? You know, sometimes you get ideas like, well I changed the hours,you know, we're running it, you know, nine to five,I'd run it, you know, from eight to 10, you know, whatever.

So we learn, we always learn. It's amazing when you go,the work we did in Detroit spawned advancing blackpathways, has spawn work skills initiatives, has spawnedthe Detroit Service Corps, it's spawn virtual call centers, because of what we did in Detroit. So now we're doing that incities around the world. And so you learn a lot whenyou get out in the road. – Now you've been chief exec for 18 years.

And you're obviously ina very powerful position. But even the most powerful people, powerful leaders need checks and balances, who keeps you in check? – Well, my wife would probablysay I do and she does. But I think my management team, we're all very open,everyone we share everything. I emote to them, you know,ways that you wouldn't hear me do it elsewhere.

They emote back, you know, you're wrong. You didn't read it properly,you missed this major point, so it's a very open conversation. I don't think any of thosefolks are intimidated by me, you know, and there's very little after the fact conversation like, okay, I didn't wanna mentionthis in front of everybody, they're brave enough tomention in front of anybody. And you know, I've hadpeople, you know, three.

Of 'em come in and say, Jamie,you're making a mistake. Sit down, we wanna explain itto you, don't say anything, okay, lay it on me. So you try to create avery open environment. And then also, you know, wehave regulators, auditors, press. So we get, believe me, we geta lot of feedback from a lot of people even in thepress I always tell people when sometimes it's wrong andwe have a knee jerk reaction,.

I always start by saying,are they partially right? Like dividing intocomponent pieces, you know, so maybe there's somethingthere that we should fix, even though we think thestory was too skewed. Separate the two, don't justhave a knee jerk reaction to every complaint you get. – Just to bring it backto what's going on now, the current news cycle withthese very polarizing issues in America.

Do you think that's the sort of thing that chief execs like youshould comment on publicly or make statements as a company on. – The answer is yes. If it's appropriate andyou know how to do it. So, you know, in my letterit's quite clear I'm a like a full throated red-blooded, patriotic, free enterprise capitalist andI'm unabashed and unashamed. I also acknowledge that we'veleft part of society behind.

There's nothing wrongwith 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 hardwhere people make a mistake sometimes is when you look at certain laws and they're passing legislationand people are pounding up saying you gotta support this. But if you read and whichwe read it, so when some of these laws got, weread all 50 things in it,.

You and I would agree withsome and we wouldn't agree with the others. So we're being asked tomake a binary decision. I said, no, we're not doing that. So we'll support the LGBT community. We'll support free, fair, safe voting. I don't have to get involvedin every little voting act that every state's put inplace because you know, some are tougher than others,.

But most of 'em generally, you know, are free, fair and safe and so you gotta be a little careful. But when it comes to defending our people, absolutely we're gonna do it.- Mm-mm. – When it comes to liftingup other parts of society, absolutely. We think lifting up, youknow, parts of community, I remind people J.P. Morgan reaches out,.

We're in a hundred countries, we reach out to 12,000 businesses, 80 millionAmericans, cities, schools, states, hospitals, the military. We hire vets, we hire disabled,we hire, we also reach out to disadvantaged communities. And I mentioned thatcommunity branch and they work and they generate businessand they help lift up society. You know, if you can take, I always say, and I we use Detroit as example.

If Detroit was a failingcity 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 thebiggest bank in Detroit, so it's obviously good for us generally. And so, you know, we work on it. We also work I always think isimportant for business people is, it's one thing for me to, we do skills initiativesin New York, you know,.

The CEO jobs council in NewYork trying to get, you know, and we've helped hire, youknow, 30, 40,000 kids outta CUNY and we're doing programs with the mayor and the Department of Education chancellor in the high schools now, all started by my wife by the way. But we also, and I thinkit's important that business get involved in public policy. We can do all that wewant, but if we can make.

The public education systembetter, 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 businessshould get involved in public policy as appropriate. – So you're often asked,when are you going to retire? And your answer is often in five years. – Yeah.- So is 2029 the year? – No, I stopped saying that.

So first of all, it'stotally up to the board, we've got wonderful people. We've always said, I'mone of the few people who has a president in placewho could take over tomorrow. And not many people could say that. And if you spoke to thepeople who know the company, they would say they'refour or five people, they would be very comfortablewith running the company. You know, they're being movedaround at different jobs.

They're very good, they'revery happy, I'm very happy the board will decide. I think I would tell youwhen I can no longer give my best, am I all, I shouldn't do it, I should move on at that point. But you know, I still havethe energy and the capability and I still think I'maging well in terms of, you do gain wisdom as you get older. And hopefully you canprovide value to the company.

And my country through this perch. – So I've got some final questions here, they're short questionsthat require short answers. – Oh, okay. – How many days shouldpeople be in the office? – Five is ideal. There are some jobs where,you know, taking a day or two at home is fine,it is very job specific. – Are Americas downtowns dead?.

– No, I think some aregonna have difficulty, 'cause their own policies, but no. – If you're a young personand you want to work at J.P. Morgan, what shouldyou study at college? – It almost doesn't matterto tell you the truth, 'cause you're looking forsmart, ethical, decent people. You know, if you took history or not. But I do think in businessyou should learn the language, your business, which is accounting.

And learn a little bit basic business. So I think it would help to do accounting, finance markets, something like that. – On the rare occasionthat you take a day off, what do you do? – So my daughters have said to me, “Dad, you need some more hobbies.” I love my family, so wehave a lot of family dinners when I'm around.

We have mostly Sundaynight, maybe Saturday night, but I told 'em, here's my hobbies. And we do a lot of thistogether, we hike together, we take vacations together. I love wine, I love music, I love history. Actually I try to exercise every day. You know, I just startedplaying squash again, which I'm still worriedabout, but I'm gonna do it, but I was doing my10-year-old granddaughter, so.

– So you say you love music,any particular type of music? – Almost all. – All.- Yeah. – Eclectic – Rock, Jazz. Jazz is the only one I don't,but I don't, I just don't, it doesn't resonate for some reason. But you know, I grew up with classical, I grew up playing classical piano,.

I can play the guitar a little bit. I'm gonna pick that upagain soon too, by the way. So I love Elton John, BruceSpringsteen, Rolling Stones, Beatles, you name it. – What's your morning routine? – Okay, I wake up usually at 4:35. I read five papers, you'll be happy to hear in a very specific form. So I flick through the post,'cause everyone else does it.

I read the front pageof the Washington Post, any story that I find very interesting and the business section,which is very narrow and the editorials, I thinkthere's some very smart people at the editorials there thatthen I read the New York Times front section, beginning toend all of it, whether I like what they're saying ornot, I read their business section, which isn't great. Then I read the Wall StreetJournal front Section Exchange.

Next and then the FT andthe reason I do FT last is because all the other onesare very much skewed to the US and you know, we operatein a hundred countries. So the FT gives you a betterview, like the Economist, I read The Economist every weekend of what's going on inPakistan and India and the UK and the Middle East andChina and the Economist is unbelievably well done, FTcovers all that ground too. So I love it if you knowit takes me an hour.

Then I do a lot of otherreading, by the way, both internal mail, Axios, you know, Politico, stuff like that. So I like reading, I'll doit for hours in the morning, but then I like to get a little exercise and go into the office, so. – And do you ever switch off your phone? – I am not a fanatic on the phone. I don't even have ithere, I have it outside,.

But I think people should spenda little less time in that, a little more time thinking,I haven't done podcasts. When my exercise, I'm either doing music or watching some stupidshow or something like that. So, but I'm not a fan, I'mnot on any social media. Every year I test it, I goon for literally just a week to see what everyone else is doing. You know, reels and Instagramand Facebook and TikTok and then I click out of it.

– Never attempted. – No.- Good. Well, Jamie Dimon, thankyou very much indeed, – Emma, it was a pleasure, thank you.

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