Jamie Dimon

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1:03The world's best known banker is Jamie Dimon, the longtime CEO of J.P. Morgan. I had a chance to meet with Jamie Dimon recently to talk about what's going on in the financial world. He said he didn't want to be chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, but maybe would take a call to be secretary of the Treasury.

1:23So recently you've been talking about the importance of the United States and are celebrating our 250th, but also investing in things that are security related. What made you focus on that? And you're now gonna commit, what, a trillion and a half dollars over the next 10 years for this kind of investment. Why did you decide to do that? So I've always been a patriot. And like, you know, you talk here about growth, you know, growing the economy and the grievances of America, which is a lot of legitimate ones we gotta deal with and get policy right. But one of them was this notion that we ended up being so reliant on other people, some potential adversaries, for things critical to the security of the United States.

2:02And it wasn't just us, it was our allies too. So we did some real research across 28 industry groups, and you're talking about rare earths, which you all know about, active pharmaceutical ingredients, which some of you may know about, obviously military production, drones, air, cyber, satellite. What are the things you need for resiliency? That we already did a lot of it, and we wanted to do more, realizing it was an important thing to do. How we got here, I don't like crying over spilled milk, but we should never have been here. So that's a trillion and a half dollars. My guess is it'll be quite a bit more than that by the time we're done.

2:34We've had a deluge of interest in it. Then we hired Todd Combs who's just a world class investor and a world class person who's got his own deluge coming in to invest 10 billion and probably more. And we certainly probably have partners in that in helping companies with growth capital that they need to grow to build the next plans or something. We did real research on supply chains. There are a lot of companies that provide what's important for our basic, important military equipment that need help to grow. They could be private companies or bigger companies. There's a venture capital component.

3:06We're also going to do research. So think around the shipbuilding ecosystem and policy. A lot of things that are wrong are policy reasons. How we're allowed to procure in the military, things like permitting, EPA laws. if you want to keep this country safe and secure, we need to do this work, and we need to do it now and right away. It also will be extended to nations in Europe, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and it's just important we do it. National security, if you didn't get the wake-up call in February when 300 ,000 Russian troops invaded Ukraine, the world's not safe. It was never safe. We just got lulled in a false sense of security.

3:48The biggest safe thing to have is the strongest military on the planet. When the Great Recession happened, were you worried about the viability of our financial system? Your bank was in pretty good shape. Were you worried that many investment banks and commercial banks were going to go under at that time? Well, a lot of them did. And yeah, a lot of companies around the world, a lot of non-banks around the world went bankrupt. You know, J.P. Morgan. We did a lot to keep people afloat. We took a lot of risk to do that. We worked with governments around the world. It was terrifying. And it was 24-7 and people were just trying to do the right thing to make sure we kept the...

4:22Do you think there's a chance of something like that happening in the next couple of years? Do you think we're much better protected from that kind of problem? Well, there's no chance that you're going to have that kind of problem. But there are chances you'll have a problem somewhere, somehow. The biggest unknown is geopolitics. And it's not like... You have to be dangerous carefully to talk about it. It's not like that's going to determine what the economy does in 2026, but it is a moving tectonic plate. You know, alliances, you know, obviously there's terrible war in Ukraine, which we need to do as much as we can to help Ukraine, but aided and abetted by Russia, somewhat by China.

4:59Those folks have told you what they want to do. They want to dismantle the system set up, they think, by America, but it's set up by the Western world. After World War II, it's been quite successful. Yeah, there are a lot of forces at play. and people are going to have to choose how they want to play this for now. So yeah, that would be my greatest concern and that's about the future of the free democratic world. That's not just about America. Are you worried about the over-regulation that some people in the banking world think that is occurring now or do you think the regulations are okay now?

5:31The problem with regulations, when you talk to some people, it always acts like it's more or less. And a lot of you deal with regulations. I think you can create more liquidity in the system, more capital uses, more lending capability, reduce rules and regulations which cause complaints about debanking and complaints about X, I think we could make the system better, work better, cheaper, work for more Americans, and safer. What bothers me the most is when we talk about regulations that no one ever steps back and say, what are we trying to accomplish, or why do we want to accomplish it, and what's better, this or that?

6:03Because no matter what you do, there are pros and cons. Banks are very strong today, but take the system as a whole. We've gone from 8 ,000 public companies to 4 ,000 public companies. Is that what we wanted? Because that's what we did We did it with no forethought without even thinking about it But it was you know years of rules and regulations that made it costly and litigious and hard and you know where we let Institutes like ISS and Glass-Lewis, you know vote 30 % of the shares in America You know and and so yeah, I'm quite concerned about that. We get regulations, right? We all want safe financial systems, safe food, but it doesn't mean you have to have endless regulations.

6:41Regulations should be reviewed and improved all the time as opposed to what we do today. I put that in a lot of policy. We just add things on top of things. If you look at policy in America, well, affordable housing, it's all about policy. Zoning policies, permitting policies, housing policies, it's all about policy. It's got not a damn thing to do that people don't want to build homes or move into homes. You know and I could say about a mortgage business we made it more expensive because the rules and regulations Education, you know, we don't measure the outcomes of high schools and community colleges and colleges How many jobs they get at what income levels and we could do it?

7:17So look at work skills. We're gonna need two hundred thousand welders. We need welding schools So if government's gonna have policies you have policy that aids and abets and incents and has the guard wheels to create the right behaviors, not endless policies that slow things down, which is what we have. We're slowly going the way of Europe. Europe, you may not know this, has gone from 90 % per person GDP of America to 65%. That's what they've done. It was all policy. A lot of the policy is done in the name of good. And that's what we do all the time. We're endless rules and regulations that create these things.

7:53I also think you all should learn to call it not red tape, but blue tape. Okay, the Democrats love that crap and then they want to make it litigious. You know that every flaw ever that ever happens is on purpose by by bad people so Policy we need good policy and we're gonna be fighting much more for good policy this year at JP Morgan. Now Are you worried about the size of the US debt? We have 38 trillion dollars of debt We're adding 2 trillion every year. Do you see any way that's going to be solved? And do you worry that this is going to impact the value of the dollar at some point? So if you look at the economy today, there's a lot of good short-term things.

8:27Like think of this year. You know, the one big beautiful bill, there's a lot of stimulus. The Fed is buying bonds again. They don't call it QE. I would. But it lifts up asset prices and stabilizes certain markets. Deregulation is real. And it's going to also drive animal spirits. A lot of investment coming to the United States and AI. That's all good. And that's probably going to drive stuff. I call this geopolitics and the deficit. I call it more like tectonic plates. They're difficult. They're moving. They may crash. We don't know. And we don't know when. So it isn't a 2026 issue, but our deficit is almost$2 trillion this year.

9:07Total debt is$30 trillion. Next year,$32 trillion. Then$34 trillion. Then$37 trillion. Then$40 trillion. It is not sustainable. It will not work eventually. I just don't know when that is. The best anecdote is growth. I mean, if you just model anything, growth will make up for it. And growth, I always tell people, good policy is free. Like we already spent$800 billion in the K-12. You know, stopping people from building stuff is free. It'll create jobs, it'll create productivity. And so we have time to get the policy right, to grow the economy, and then we're going to have to start making some other choices too.

9:44As a president of the United States said, I'd like you to be secretary of the Treasury or chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, what would you say to that? Well, Chairman of the Fed, I'd put in the absolutely, positively, no chance, no way, no how for any reason. Secretary of Treasury, I would consider it. If a president calls you up and asks you to do something, you should consider it. So I would take the call and consider it and think about why and what they want, etc. But what they want and how they want to operate, that would be important to me. I like my job. I've been my own boss for pretty much 25 years and I like it that way.

10:19So recently, there's been some comment by you about the independence of the Federal Reserve Board. What more might you want to say about your view about the importance of the independence of the Federal Reserve Board? Yeah, you know, too much ink gets spilled on certain things. Everyone I know, including the President of the United States, says we need an independent Fed Board. The question is only about when certain things take place, and think of lawsuits and stuff like that, does it chip away at that independence to some spectrum? So you can say a little bit, you can say a lot, but you don't want to chip away too much because if you chip away too much, in my view, this is my opinion, it will drive rates higher, not lower.

10:56That's all. That's not a job you would take. If the president of the United States said to you, I'd love you to be the chairman, you'd be very independent, you wouldn't take that. I would so much more prefer this job than that job. That's a hard job, but I don't want to do that job. I'm Carol Masser. And I'm Tim Stenevek, inviting you to join us for the Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast. Now, every day, we are bringing you reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead. We've got insight on the people, the companies, and trends that are shaping today's complex economy. That's right, Tim.

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12:13You went to Harvard Business School, graduated as a Baker Scholar, top 5 % of your class. You could have gone to Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, all the famous firms. You chose to go work for a person who was a friend of your father's, name is Sandy Weil. You did that, and then when Sandy left, you stayed with him, and then ultimately you guys went to Citicorp, and then he fired you. Did you ever think then that you'd be coming back and running the most important bank in in the world at the time you got fired there? Or what were you thinking at that time? And I said you should come into private equity.

12:44I went to see you and I said why don't you come to private equity and you didn't seem that interested. The biggest money offer I ever got in my life was from this guy over here. It was never about money for me. And I knew after I got fired that they were gonna screw up Citi because I knew how stupid some of the things they were doing was. But no, I didn't think that way. I just, you know, I took time. I thought about all these various alternatives. I spoke to a lot of people. And then I went to Bank One. I loved the Home Depot guys. They were talking to me. But I had to confess to them when I walked in.

13:16I'd never been in a Home Depot until my friend made me go that weekend before I had dinner with Arthur Blank, Bernie Marcus, and Ken Langone. And I just loved their culture. But I'd never been in a merchant business. And Bank One was there. I thought it was going to be tough. I put half my money into it. I moved my money to Chicago. I love Chicago. All I thought about it was just do the best you can. I don't like when senior people complain. I always had a no why in sign. Suck it up and do the job. That's all it was. I just go about the work. You know, and division by division, person by person, department by department, tech by tech, you know, try to build something great.

13:50I had my eye on JPMorgan Chase and a couple of years I thought it would never happen because we were so small and not doing well. But four years later, we had done a good job at Bank One. The values were close enough. Bill Harris and I know each other, we merged the two companies. Then I had a dream that if we did it right, we could make this a great company. Then I really did. What do you think is the most important thing you did that put J.P. Morgan ahead of every other bank in the world? You worked harder, you hired better people around you. What were the things that you think the most important thing that made J.P.

14:23Morgan what it is today? A lot of people do things better. So to say we're the best and everything is not right. And I think that's one of the reasons sometimes we do better a little bit, which is, I'm relentless. Go through system by system by system by system. Get out in the road. Visit other companies. They all do things better than you. Learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, and be relentless about doing it. Big companies slow down. They become complacent. They become bureaucratic. All that stuff, arrogant, is the petri dish of politics. As Jeff Bezos says, that kind of stuff leads to stasis and death.

14:54If you don't believe me, you look at all the companies who failed. Huge, wonderful companies. That's what management is. It's relentless attention to detail, getting strategy right, investing your capital, not being beholden people. But the most important is that the people at the company can contribute to the best of their ability. They know that you, the boss, don't know everything, and they know that you just want to do the right thing for the company, the client, or the community. And that's the only goal. There's no other goal. We don't pander to Wall Street about quarterly earnings or stuff like that.

15:25I've never spent any time of that in my life. Just try to do the right thing for the right reason and do it quickly. Your market capitalization is up about, I guess it's about the 700 % and your stock price is up about 500 % or something like that? Like 1 ,000%, but go ahead. How much? Well, we paid back, we bought back a lot of stock and paid a lot of dividends and all that. So it's pretty good, Tom. So people are very happy. And so the question you get asked every day, five times a day, is how much longer do you want to do this? And the answer is five more years. Yeah, at least. About five more years?

16:02I love what I do. It's up to the board how long I do it. It was all that I have the energy and the spit in the eye and the fire in the gut. Yeah, I want to do it. You recently built a new building in New York. Why did you decide to build your headquarters in New York? You tore down the building you had, built a new building, took a couple years and cost maybe$3 billion or something like that, and it's now open. Are you happy you made that decision, and are you going to build a similar building in London now? Yeah, we are. So if you look at what we have, we spend$40 billion a year on people, which is important,$4 billion a year on real estate.

16:36We want to have great real estate. The old building wasn't fit for purpose. It was too small. Couldn't handle our trading floors. I looked everywhere. I looked downtown. I looked at Hudson Yards. I looked at buying Vanderbilt. But we could tear that building down. We could buy air rights. You know, I thought it was the best location and the best city. Many people in the business world, they're out socializing, all kinds of other organizations. You don't do anything. You just run your bank and spend time with your family. Isn't that boring? No. I love my family. I love all of them. I got seven grandkids and one more coming.

17:10We take our family vacation together. That's the most important thing. The second most important thing is my country that I do spend time on. You know, with my own time, my own effort, my company obviously gets involved. I love business. I think if I, you know, she's talking about I don't do a lot of black ties, I don't play golf, I don't do red carpets. I do a little bit, you know, but I love what I do. I mean, it's not like, I don't feel like I have any regrets at all about doing that. And I feel, you know, if JPMorgan Chase does well, I can help our employees, I help my clients, I help my communities, I help my country, I help the world, if I do a good job.

17:44You know, I always tell people, you know, if we don't keep JPMorgan healthy and vibrant, I cannot do those things. That's the other side of that. You've got to lay people off, you're miserable, your life is terrible. So I fight hard to make sure we're healthy and vibrant. Warren Buffett more or less invented the idea of writing a letter to shareholders that everybody reads. You have done the same and now Warren Buffett's probably not going to write his letter anymore. Yours is widely read. How much time do you put into writing that letter? And do you get nervous that so many people are going to pay attention to every single word?

18:15Do you have to get it exactly right? Yeah, I do all of that. So I've written his letters my whole life. And in fact, I got his letters from 1956 when it was a partnership in private. And he said you should speak to your shareholder like it's your smart sister or mother or something like that and explain to them what you're doing and why you're doing it. So I do that. I make a list of questions. I get the questions. I do it myself. I ask shareholders. I get my management team. Like, what is the most important stuff for J.P. Morgan? And I kind of make that list. I start writing. I spend a lot of time on it.

18:47Very often I used to answer the question. I don't know the answer, and I actually do the work. So now I'm doing a lot of research while I'm writing the letter to answer the question. What are we going to do? Is what we did the right thing? Should we do more of it? How are we going to use AI or open banking? Whatever the question is, debanking. What is the real issue? Then I try to explain it in terms to our people. And then I started doing public policy because no bank is actually stronger, much stronger than the country it lives in. America from 2000 to 2020 grew 2 % a year, had it grown 3 % a year, which I think was eminently achievable.

19:28Our GDP per person would be$20 ,000 more a year today per person, which would afford a lot of safety nets, a lot of infrastructure, have a lot of taxes. And we didn't do it. And it's around basic things, so I started to do more of that. What are the things that we could do that could foster growth, secure the country, make it a healthier place, lift up all of our citizens? Almost all of the bad policies we have, the inner city schools don't work, immigration policy, some of the stuff we do in immigration, permitting policies, schools, almost all of that hurts lower paid people more than anyone in this room.

20:04So in some ways, we could ignore it because it's not really affecting us directly because your kids don't go to those schools. I was worried about that. They have the lower income folks have worse healthcare, worse job prospects, it's become intergenerational, their schools don't work, they have more crime, and that's what we did. That was us, that was all policy. And then people stand behind ideology and morality on both sides, thinking that they did stuff to fix it, and they didn't. And so I have a frustration around that, and obviously I feel the same way about the security and resiliency things, things like permitting.

20:38I always make a list of what the more how we do with mortgages and affordable housing So we may start a new one called the American dream. We do a lot to do mortgages affordable housing health care skills jobs You know I would double the Ergum tax credit or something like that There are a lot of things we could do that goes to three percent and help all of our citizens and secure the nation And we better do it pretty quick because on the security side We don't have forever of all the things you do is the most enjoyable getting to meet with members of Congress When you come down here, is that an uplifting experience when you come down and meet with members?

21:12How do you like that? You should know, I do it all the time. It's part of my job. Years ago I said, government is another line of business. It is. We take it seriously. To make an important point here, and the chamber does this, which I think they do a great job, there are a lot of people in the Congress, House and Senate, who want to do the right job. And they need help to do the right job. I'm not insulting their intelligence, they're quite bright, but they need the research, the facts, the analysis to figure out what to do when these complex issues come up. So I think we all need to do it. And the only thing I'd urge you all to do when you do it, don't always make it parochial about your own self-interest.

21:50It should also be about what's in the interest of the United States of America. You're all going to do fine anyway. What happens from unions and government and businesses, where the self-interest is so high, it actually is part of why we have 2 % growth. And I think we should all open our eyes a little bit and make sure we do the right things. It's okay to fight for you, for your own interest, but there's too much of that going on. I mean, you can't be working all the time. Do you have any hobbies? Do anything other than worry about the J.P. Morgan? My daughters, who I also love deeply, and I have wonderful son-in-laws, once said to me, Dad, you need more hobbies.