Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., said he was not surprised that Donald Trump won the election. “I was angry,” he said. inefficient government. People wanted more pro-growth, pro-business policies, and they didn’t want to be constantly lectured about social policy. I think it’s a social advantage, and it’s “mine.” roads or highways. ” I traveled all over the country and I felt it everywhere I went. ”
I asked, “Do you understand that there are dark clouds surrounding the economy?”
“I understand that, because I think there are a lot of legitimate concerns that Americans have. For example, they’re angry about an incompetent government. They’re angry about immigration. . Some people have legitimate problems.”
Even he said he was “cautiously pessimistic” about the economy, despite falling unemployment, subdued inflation and soaring stock prices. And as the president of America’s largest bank, what Mr. Dimon says about things matters.
He called Bitcoin a “pyramid scheme” and “as useless as a rock,” but added, “One day we’re going to have some kind of digital currency. I’m against cryptocurrencies. I’m not doing that, you know. Although Bitcoin itself has no intrinsic value, it is frequently used by sex traffickers, money launderers, and ransomware. I don’t think you should smoke, just like I think you have a right to smoke.”
Since he took over the bank 20 years ago, the company’s workforce has doubled to 320,000 and assets have increased by nearly $3 trillion. Perhaps his grandparents, who came to the United States from Greece with little money in the early 1900s, would be surprised.
Dimon spent much of his childhood in an apartment in a middle-class section of Queens, New York, sharing a room with his two brothers. “I broke my arm on that monkey bar,” Dimon said, revisiting the street where he grew up.
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I asked, “When you were a kid, did you ever dream that in a million years you would be running one of the biggest banks in the world?”
“No,” he answered. “My father was a stockbroker, so I was aware of that world from time to time, but I never met a CEO until I went to college or something like that.”
He grew to become one of the most successful CEOs in the country, processing $10 trillion a day.
Although his bank is thriving and healthy, Mr. Dimon, now 68, has had two major health scares. The first time was throat cancer 10 years ago.
He says his symptoms are in remission. “But I know a little more,” he said. “People who are told they have cancer know a little bit more than other people. It’s staring you in the face, and it might actually happen. You become a little more cautious, I’m a little more thoughtful. I don’t want to get cancer.” ”
He also had a heart scare in March 2020, at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. “My heart, I mean, the pain in it was unusual. I thought I heard it rip. It was an aortic dissection. There was a tear in the aorta.” He was told he might not make it in time. Ta.
I asked, “Does having surgery mean, at least in your mind, that you have lived the life you were meant to live?”
“Well, not quite enough, but yeah,” Dimon laughed.
He woke up after seven or eight hours on the operating table. “The doctor said I was one of the few people he’d ever seen wake up like that right after surgery. I waved to the kids who had been sitting there the whole time,” and I fell asleep in the ICU again.
“Waking up in an intensive care unit is like someone who has never had to rely on anyone else before, and suddenly there are tubes attached everywhere and they can’t do anything for themselves. There are no tubes in the heart. But there’s a tube in your lungs, and a tube in your jugular vein…”
He was hospitalized for a week, returned to work a month later, and was soon traveling the world. He says he spends 40% of his time traveling.
We met him in an executive suite on the 43rd floor of the bank’s headquarters in Manhattan. From there, you can see where he grew up. And on the left, you can see the dazzling new headquarters of JP Morgan, which stands next door and is nearly twice as tall. He says it’s taller than the Empire State Building.
It’s interesting to note that among the big jobs Dimon handles, one of the things he’s most proud of is opening branches in low-income and underserved communities across the country. It means that it is. During a visit to a branch in Harlem, he said, “The mortgage paperwork is really difficult, so in one of these area branches, a man stood up and finally bought the house he had lived in for 30 years. He said one of his mortgage officers called him every day for months to reassure him that he would not receive the homeowner’s subsidy. He said he couldn’t get it.
This is not a non-profit organization. These local branches generate profits for the bank.
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But what about the other side of the spectrum? When asked about the growing wealth of the super-rich and what’s “abnormal” about the system, Dimon said, “‘What’s abnormal?’ I think we have to be very careful in saying that.” You want a healthy economy, and you really want a healthy economy to grow all Americans? Some of that wealth should be fixed. ”
“But I haven’t heard you say, “There’s something wrong with billionaires growing like poppies.” I mean, what is the tax law?”
“If I were king for a day, I would probably change a lot of the tax laws as well, but I won’t go into detail about them. They probably wouldn’t go down as much as you think they should go down.” ”
“No, but I’m curious that you’re not saying, ‘This is wrong. This won’t work.'”
“I think what is wrong is not that the top 0.1% did well, but that the bottom 30% did poorly.”
“Why not?”
“They may be unrelated. What do I need to do to fix it for everyone…”
“But the other person hasn’t told you what’s wrong?”
“I don’t know what the problem is on the other side,” Dimon replied.
Dimon himself is a billionaire. I asked about Elon Musk, the richest person in the world. “It’s clear he’s a tremendous talent,” Dimon said. “I mean, if you look at Tesla and SpaceX, yeah, we need to make government more efficient. Is this the way to do that? I don’t know. Do we want them to be successful? Absolutely.”
“But for someone so wealthy and with so many important companies that are important to our economy and even our national security to be suggesting now that he can influence right-wing politics in Europe? That doesn’t sound right, right? ”
Dimon said, “I’m not responsible for his actions, so let him do it.” But for you to say it’s weird, it’s not that weird. This has been happening in this country for a long time. Back at Lindbergh, there’s more interference in transatlantic politics than you might think.
“Are you worried about that?”
“no.”
“Would you like to take it in stride?”
“Please take your stride.”
“Someone called him an oligarchy, an American oligarchy.”
“Yes, that’s a bad word.”
Mr. Dimon has been in banking for more than 40 years, so the inevitable question arises. “When are you going to retire?” “The last time I was asked, I said within five years. But even if they say I’m retiring, I don’t plan on retiring like that. Maybe I’ll write a book.” I may not teach them. I may work with children. I never want to pressure them to work with me.
“I don’t hear people saying, ‘I might become chairman and give up the CEO job.'”
“Oh, that’s a possibility. It’s very likely that it will happen. Again, that’s up to the board, not up to me. But if that makes sense, I’m going to He may serve as chairman.”
He said he did not know who his successor would be. But there’s one thing he knows. “I love my job. I love the job. I love our people. That’s what motivates me. Like many people, by Friday I’m exhausted. I want to go home, I want to go home.” Let’s have a martini and go to bed! But I love my job. I think it’s great to have a purpose in life. Please draw Picasso. ”
WEB EXTRA: Watch an extended interview with Jamie Dimon
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Story produced by Gabriel Falcon. Editor: Ed Givenish.