Transcript of Jamie Dimon Urges US To Engage With China

America has a wonderfully strong hand with all of our freedoms and prosperous nation, that we should work with our allies, which is exactly what China doesn’t want. But I think China and America should engage. They’ve started to, but right now they’re not talking very much. I think the first thing you do when you sit down with anyone is say, how’s your family? What are your objectives? You know, we all have common interests.

ROULA KHALAF: And do you think the president should call Xi Jinping and ask about his family?

JAMIE DIMON: I’m going to leave it up to them how they go about it, but I don’t want to get this 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.

ROULA KHALAF: 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?

JAMIE DIMON: I don’t think we have any engagement right now. But that can start tomorrow. It doesn’t have to wait a year, can 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.

On Decoupling from China

ROULA KHALAF: Do you think that a decoupling by the U.S. is it possible to decouple from China today?

JAMIE DIMON: 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 close allies for that. 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. This has been going on for 100 different years.

But a lot of things don’t matter as much. You know, where you get your textiles made, your footwear, 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. 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.

The Western Alliance

ROULA KHALAF: I think your whole point about alliances was something that you made very clear in your 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?

JAMIE DIMON: I think the most important thing is that we don’t read a book in 40 years how the West was lost. 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 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% of America, to like 50%. That’s not sustainable. I think Europe has already recognized 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.

I think fragmentation of the world is a bad idea. Fragmentation of the Western world and you can end up with the world looking like before World War I and World War II, which was 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.

ROULA KHALAF: What are the consequences for JPMorgan Chase of this potential fragmentation?

JAMIE DIMON: Well, I think from a company standpoint, Warren Buffett talks about the resiliency of America. If you just invested in America, I think that’s been true. But for any company here, a lot of companies around the Western countries around the world, having a strong America has been good for them and having a strong Western world’s been good for them. So if that wasn’t true, I think it would put us in a much weaker state. I’m talking over 40 or 50 years, not the next three years or so.

Market Volatility and Treasury Concerns

ROULA KHALAF: Let’s talk about the markets because JP Morgan is a big trader in Treasuries and I’d like to hear your understanding of what happened in the Treasury’s market last week. Who was selling, to what extent did this episode show vulnerability to leverage hedge funds, like on the basis trade, for example?

JAMIE DIMON: There is 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 were able to do that. I think those things are far more important. And obviously there’s dollar weakness and ten-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.

ROULA KHALAF: You didn’t see anything disorderly in the markets last week?

JAMIE DIMON: It was a rapid move and stuff like that, but most of the markets were fine. Credit spreads did 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.

U.S. Economic Confidence

ROULA KHALAF: 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 U.S. How worried are you about that?

JAMIE DIMON: The US is still the most prosperous nation the world’s ever seen, 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, 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.

In my letter I wrote, America first is okay, but not America alone. 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 we should be careful. I don’t think anyone should assume they have a divine right to success and therefore don’t worry about it.

ROULA KHALAF: So you can’t take it for granted.

JAMIE DIMON: I would never take anything for granted. No.

ROULA KHALAF: Do you have faith in Scott Bessent to steer the economy?

JAMIE DIMON: 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 transshipment. 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, okay, 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.

ROULA KHALAF: So you can’t tell us that within three months the whole issue of tariffs and trade will be behind us?

JAMIE DIMON: I can’t. But if it isn’t, I think it will just be causing more consternation.

JPMorgan’s Performance and Business Outlook

ROULA KHALAF: 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?

JAMIE DIMON: I spend no time trying to reassure investors. Nor do I care that much about a year’s results or quarters results. The profits are the 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. The result in 2024 were because of 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. 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’s 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 of the data going forward.

But I always tell people, they always say, leave us with a good taste in our mouth or 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 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’m about the bigger issue we’ve already spoke about.

ROULA KHALAF: 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, you’re making any decision, really.

Navigating Economic Uncertainty

JAMIE DIMON: Yeah. So you have to separate two things. You never know the future. If you’re a business person, you might see a chance for recession. And I think it’s almost a waste of time to constantly do that every day. When you build a company or a ship, you have to say, “I have to deal with this whole range of outcomes.”

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 under one way. I think some of these other uncertainties are material. One has been there for years now – geopolitical issues, trade tariffs, potential retaliation, deregulation benefits.

There are all these things taking place. Will we settle Ukraine with a good settlement for their sovereignty? A good settlement for Israel? Something with Iraq? I don’t know. But all those things create what you’re saying – an abnormal amount of turbulence in forecasting. That might change how you invest your money. You’re not changing because of a potential recession, but because you have a completely different point of view about the future.

Wall Street vs. Main Street

ROULA KHALAF: So the administration makes a distinction between Wall Street and Main Street. The emphasis is always, “What’s bad for Wall Street may be good for Main Street.” 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?

JAMIE DIMON: First of all, I agree that Main Street is more important than Wall Street. We bank 80 million Americans and 6 million small businesses and cities, schools, states, hospitals, 100 countries. I think the health of those things is far more important than how I view the health of JPMorgan or Wall Street.

I do object to this “Wall Street” thing, because who is Wall Street? We’re owned by veterans, retirees, pension plans all around the country. That’s who I represent. When you say Wall Street, are you including the institutional investors who represent veterans, unions, CalPERS and CalSTRS?

It’s symbiotic. Every time a big company builds a plant that hires 5,000 people, it usually hires 20,000 people outside that plant in small businesses. If we’ve grown at 3% a year over the last 20 years, opposed to 2%, that’s $15,000 more of GDP that would have lifted up all of society and very importantly the lower income side. When you grow the economy, they benefit the most. When you shrink the economy, they get hurt the most. Our goal should be getting the whole economy to do better.

Consumer and Business Stress

ROULA KHALAF: But are you starting to see stress on corporate and consumer?

JAMIE DIMON: Consumer? Very little. People write about credit losses going up, but they’ve really normalized. They can continue to get worse. 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. Car sales clearly went up in the last couple of weeks.

Usually the consumer has stress when there’s unemployment. That’s when you’ll see credit losses go up and home prices and vehicle prices come down.

Businesses are still doing fine and earning money. But I think all bets are off now. In the next three or four months, company after company will report earnings and tell you what they think about what the tariffs do to them, their sales, their consumers. Some companies probably will feel a lot of stress. Some may benefit from all this. You’ll see in real time what people think about it.

ROULA KHALAF: And so no stress yet, but stress to be expected.

JAMIE DIMON: Stress up here. There’s not a business person I speak to who doesn’t feel a little stressed trying to figure out what this all means.

Corporate America’s Perspective

ROULA KHALAF: So you remember Davos, just a couple of months ago. I think my observation was that it was peak optimism for US Business. Everyone was excited about taxes, deregulation. Everyone was playing down all of the potential downside.

JAMIE DIMON: I wasn’t one of those, by the way.

ROULA KHALAF: Okay, 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?

JAMIE DIMON: Yes, they do. Remember I always say with American exceptionalism, there’s a really big “but.” The “but” is that since COVID, for five years, we borrowed and spent $11 trillion. That $11 trillion showed up in the hands of consumers. They had excess cash. Credit losses came down, they spent a lot of that. It created some inflation, it created growth. It also created corporate profits.

We still have a deficit of $2 trillion a year. That’s still a big “but.” When you’re spending that kind of money, there’s another side to that mountain. America’s exceptional, but it wasn’t quite that exceptional. If Europe had borrowed another trillion dollars and spent it, their GDP probably would have been a trillion dollars higher.

I think there was too much exuberance back then. I thought so at the time. When they announced the Liberation Day tariffs, they were dramatically different than people expected – way off the table. That was shocking to the global system, not just in the United States. And of course, some have already been pulled back.

Administration Strategy

ROULA KHALAF: Well, it’s unclear what’s coming, what’s going. We seem to be living day by day. Do you think there is a grand plan here? I often hear administration officials talk about a transition. What is the destination? Is there a particular destination here?

JAMIE DIMON: I don’t know. You really have to ask them. I’m hoping that the destination… I understand we need to resource certain things and I think that’s true. We need reshoring particularly around national security, unfair trade.

But we have a lot of advanced manufacturing here. We’re doing work today about what manufacturing is. Manufacturing includes footwear, textiles, furniture, low value items like putting together toasters all the way to some of the highest value stuff in the world. You should be very thoughtful about that.

To the extent those things need to be fixed, they should be fixed. The goal should be 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 complaints about “you guys also do this.” That’s true. It was not a one-way street.

I hope we accomplish what the president wants to, but we keep the Western world together militarily and economically. That to me is the only super important thing.

Business Community Response

ROULA KHALAF: When I talk to businesses in Europe today, one of their questions is why is corporate America not speaking out, resisting more? I know you have spoken out and had an impact, but is there a bigger role here for the business community?

JAMIE DIMON: I’m not sure I’ve had an impact, but I think a lot of business people are speaking to the president and the administration with constant feedback. 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 will be “no, thank you.”

I think they’re getting a lot of feedback. When people say “the business community,” their opinions are all over the place. It hasn’t coalesced in one place. Some people want to support deregulation objectives. Some companies will benefit from tariffs, some will be hurt, exemptions are being made.

I hope it doesn’t end up being the corporate trough where everyone feeds. One day there might be a coalescing of feeling about what we should and shouldn’t be doing.

Business people generally are on 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.

Banking Strategy

ROULA KHALAF: Let me ask you about the bank because you’re very 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 bank branches anymore in London. And you are still expanding. Explain why you think this is so important at a time when digital banking is growing?

JAMIE DIMON: I’m not old fashioned. If it works for the client, that’s what we do. If it didn’t work for the client, I wouldn’t do it. We’re always forward looking – what do they want?

Almost a million people visit our branches. They want our branches. We open accounts in branches, we educate in branches. Small businesses use the branches, private clients use the branches, middle market clients use the branches. If they weren’t working, I’d close them.

We also are hugely digital. Almost 80 million people use various digital services. We’re 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 their point of view.

To do that you have to be forward looking but also very analytical. It isn’t about what I want or what people say. We don’t have to guess. We do a lot of analytics to determine what works and what doesn’t work and why.

AI and Technology

ROULA KHALAF: You’re also 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 take this up and accept it?

JAMIE DIMON: No, I don’t look at it that way. Any company is always growing and morphing and changing and learning. If you’re not, you’re not going to do well. 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.

We’ve always used technology to make things better, faster, quicker for clients. We’ve always been big on analytics. It’s all about what works for the client. How can you make it work better for your banker or employee to do something better for a client? That should be a constant state of affairs at a company.

ROULA KHALAF: How do you judge whether the money is well spent? What are the metrics that you use?

AI and Investment Strategy

JAMIE DIMON: Okay, so we divided. First of all, I always, if you look at my management learning class, there’s always good expense and bad expense. I always tell people like we expense the building of a branch and this is negative for a while and it earns money. I call that an investment. I don’t care that accountants call it an expense. There’s also bad revenues. You know, it’s revenue. 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 we talk about like technology, 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 $200 million in this risk application, a big one. That’s reducing risk and fraud losses by 100, 200 million 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. 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. You know, people want to take all the time to analyze, is it going to be worthwhile? It’s going to cause a lot of money to build integrated in our systems. And you know, we’re going to gain this and lose that and it’ll save space. And look, I was like, forget all that. The ROI will never be right. Customers are going to want it just do it. So there’s no NPV. And so we do everything and say, forget that. Just this is a better thing for customers. Just do it and we’ll be okay.

ROULA KHALAF: When you look at the huge investments that we’ve seen, especially in data centers, do you think that there’s an investment bubble? Do you think the investors are actually going to make money? Because it’s still very unclear.

JAMIE DIMON: First of all, to me that’s an issue. I want to use it to do best we can for 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 our data combined with outside data without leaking our data, which is very important. We have to maintain proper controls of that.

Yeah, 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. 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 have, you know, use much more limited models, much more limited inference, much more limited database, but you still get 90% of the benefit.

Leadership Succession

ROULA KHALAF: So 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 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?

JAMIE DIMON: 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, is 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 asked me the one most important governance change with all the stupid stuff we had to do board should be alone without the CEO. And I think that creates a certain amount of independence and thought and challenging.

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 so. 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? You know, does it actually do what it says it’s going to do?

But I’ll tell you the qualities. And we’ve analyzed good successions, bad successions. I think it’s a mistake when people say we’re really looking for someone who’s in the future 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 open. 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 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 know, you make it fun for people.

And so all these various things, you know, courage and grit and heart and capability and all human beings are a mix of these things. You know, you can’t pluck out one and, you know, you’re not perfect, any one of them, but. And they form teams, you know, the people who, you know, becomes friends of Jamie and that always ends up being a disaster.

And I also 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 skeptic, 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, you know, what do you know? That you can help us do a better job for the company, the client, the countries we operate in, et cetera.

ROULA KHALAF: So all these candidates that you have, that have been identified, do you think they all have those qualities?

JAMIE DIMON: Varied degrees, you know, and then they all have different jobs. You get to see them operate under different jobs at different levels of pressure and new things, you know, dealing with new things is always harder.

Annual Road Trips

ROULA KHALAF: 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?

JAMIE DIMON: 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.

ROULA KHALAF: Why do you do this?

JAMIE DIMON: 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 centers and governors and mayors. And people come and go on the bus in between some of these stops.

ROULA KHALAF: What do you get out of this?

JAMIE DIMON: I get to see my management team in action. I would just say on the bus in between, we’ve got time tellers and branch managers and loan officers. And I would 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 that we’re not doing enough to help St. Louis X or Omaha Y.

And you have fun. I mean, and by itself, the bus trip is not completely new. We’ve been doing it for 15 years. But I always did road trips, you know, and I do it. I do the same thing. We go to the UK, we get out and about. And you know, not quite the way. We don’t have a retail system there. But you try to meet a lot of people.

ROULA KHALAF: Do you have a favorite place that you’ve visited, that you’ve toured in the United States?

JAMIE DIMON: I like them all. You know, one of the great benefits, particularly off the beaten path, is democracy works and that local communities like all these cities, the mayor, the governor, business not for profits university, they’re all working together to build the Riverwalk, 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 the UK. And I think this technology stuff changes the world for the better.

Career Reflections

ROULA KHALAF: So speaking of kids, if you were graduating today, would you still go into banking?

JAMIE DIMON: Yeah, it’s…

ROULA KHALAF: Not a very convincing.

JAMIE DIMON: Here’s what’s great about it. You know, I would. But I understand why people might not want to because it’s always constantly, you know, being attacked by various parties and sides. But 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 so, and that’s not just banks, it’s venture capital, it’s 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, you know, and people like talking to a cocktail party because what do you think of this? What do you think of that? You know, 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, you know. 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.

ROULA KHALAF: Is there anything else you would go into?

JAMIE DIMON: I’ve always loved the media, even though I criticize it quite a bit. And there’s a little media thing I may do when I’m done with this job.

ROULA KHALAF: Do tell.

JAMIE DIMON: Yeah, well, I’m not going to tell you.

ROULA KHALAF: Could it be a competitor?

JAMIE DIMON: It could be a competitor or an aide. And it’s something I think all the papers should be doing, 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 politician staff. And that’s where they get a lot of information from, which is why sometimes they get critical. They spend a little more time, understand the issue before they make it binary, you know, and then just say stuff that just fundamentally is not true and misleading.

ROULA KHALAF: You read a lot of history?

JAMIE DIMON: Yeah.

ROULA KHALAF: What are you currently… What are you reading now?

Reflections on History and the Special Relationship

JAMIE DIMON: The last book I read was about Eisenhower. I have tons of books by my bed, but I’ve been really, really busy with all these little crises, writing that chairman’s letter, et cetera. But I do want to point out to the Brits, because it’s just important. And I think people talk about this special relationship because there were articles maybe in your paper and then articles here kind of making fun of the special relationship. In September 1939, okay? 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 in 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.

On Political Aspirations

ROULA KHALAF: Did you ever consider running for president?

JAMIE DIMON: Not really.

ROULA KHALAF: Not really, but not knowing?

JAMIE DIMON: No. No. It got mentioned to me all the time. I’m sure 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? You know, your family or this? 12 months on the road, you know, raising money, all those things. I’m just not sure that’s me.

ROULA KHALAF: But you work all the time, don’t you?

JAMIE DIMON: Yeah.

Personal Life and Hobbies

ROULA KHALAF: What do you do to relax?

JAMIE DIMON: 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, like wine. I like music, I like hiking. You know, I can’t play tennis anymore. 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, you know, on the weekends I go to my 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, though. I have tons of them because you got to listen to these. But when I’m, like, 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% of the time with people telling me stuff.

ROULA KHALAF: Jamie Dimon, thank you.

JAMIE DIMON: Thank you.

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