Jamie Dimon: Hero or Hypocrite?

And the master of the obvious award goes to Jamie Dimon. That’s right. And you know what people, this is why he’s so successful at what he does over at JP Morgan. He kind of cuts, so I got to hand it to him for a CEO of a major bank. He kind of cuts through a lot of the conventional wisdom. So he’s being interviewed, okay. And he’s being asked all sorts of questions about the future and the economy. Here’s some of his best quotes. We all wanna be in a position where banks can fail and the world doesn’t go down the tubes. No, couldn’t. All right, Jamie, we know this and I’m glad he put this out here and he was obviously alluding to what happened this past March with Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. You don’t wanna go to hell in a hand basket. But with that being said, how do you make that happen? Make that happen by many of the things that we’ve talked about over the years. I’m a big believer that we need to bring back the old Glass Steagall. get rid of all the ridiculous regulations, whether it be Sarbanes, Oxley, Dodd, Frank, thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of regulations that are not in black and white, that are written in gray and haven’t made matters worse. I guess if he wants to have that type of a banking system, we’d probably have to break up JPMorgan Chase along with the other ones as well. Anyway, he goes, there was a problem in plain sight, which was some interest rate exposure. Some of these uninsured deposits that, deposits that ran like a flock of birds, it’s over for now. Most of it’s been handled. If rates go up from here and they might, it could rear its ugly head again. Okay, yeah, master the obvious, things that we all know. But unfortunately, fortunately it isn’t really covered in the media. All of these things we should have seen was hiding right there in plain sight. It actually took a look at the books, Silicon Valley Bank, Signature, you would have seen that this was obvious. That yet again, you go to all the big firms and have the stock analysts that are looking at these companies, how come they didn’t see it? Anyway, consumers, he goes on talking about the consumer, consumers have money, they have $1 trillion more in their checking accounts. It’s been coming down and we think sometime around the end of the year that excess money will be spent. Even if we go into recession, the consumers in great shape, businesses are in pretty good shape. Yeah. Okay, okay, we’re not in dire straits by any stretch of the imagination. And again, you have to plan for this accordingly. And you know, things could go in either direction. Also, he didn’t bring in this, talk about this much, it’s kind of going on the same line of what the consumer believes in right now. Joe Biden pitching Bidenomics. And again, he’s only got a 30% approval rating when it comes to the economy. And again, the black swans he’s talking about. I’m much more worried about some of these other serious things getting worse. The war in Ukraine spreading out, nuclear blackmail, the food doesn’t get delivered, starvation in Africa, all these things may mitigate and go away and we’ll all breathe a deep sigh of relief. I wouldn’t count on that. And interestingly enough, hey, he was right. Today we got word, we’ll talk about this in another podcast today as well, that the Russians No more wheat deal. No more wheat deal, can’t get it through the Black Sea anymore. So again, that’s gonna be issue. Wheat commodity prices have skyrocketed. He goes, I can’t get past the notion that we’ve never had it before. We’ve never had quantitative easing like this before. We’ve never had quantitative tightening before. I think the effects on that in the market may be more serious than people think. Yeah, I think it is a bit of a problem, the amount of money printing that we’ve gone on. Again, he plays a bit of a politician here and doesn’t get into the fiscal side of things and the fact that the Federal Reserve acts as a credit card for Washington, DC. We’ve done a terrible job at immigration, taxation, mortgages, affordable housing, healthcare, obesity, diabetes, teaching kids that at schools. And again, he’s talking about. why the economy has only grown at a tepid pace for, it’s going back to the Clinton administration. Again, he’s sounding a lot like me here on the program. Again, we were told conventional wisdom is, oh yeah, we need to keep interest rates really, really low and it’s gonna make the economy work just fine. Fantastic. The entire concept that’s out there, so you just throw money at the problem and it’s gonna make it better. It’s not better. It’s not. We are falling behind in many ways here in this country and we’re not dealing with them. It goes, we should be looking at our own flaws and not always blaming other people. The Chinese are not 10 feet tall. The notion that somehow America has to be that afraid of China, they don’t. And again, what we’ve been alluding to here, and it’s completely against conventional wisdom. And I get blowback on this as well, that everybody thinks China’s the big boogeyman. out there. And again, we’ll talk about some of the Chinese economic numbers a little bit later on one of the other podcasts today. They’re not good. Again, we could be wiping the floor with these guys if we choose to do so. But we’re not. And again, you want to get to that back and point where we’re the shining city on the hill. We want to lead by example. We don’t want to have to tear people down. Competition breeds excellence, and I’m not the slightest bit afraid. of competition from the Chinese. Worried about another Trump presidency though, mention that. I’ve never really believed I’m suited for it. I also think if you’re gonna do that, you should practice. You don’t just say, oh, I’m going to run for office. He was talking about his political ambitions. Again, there was some talk of him running for the presidency. Then he’s talking about at home work. Doesn’t work for younger kids and apprenticeships. It doesn’t really work for creativity and spontaneity. doesn’t really work for management teams. There are real flaws to the extent it works. I’m okay with it. If it doesn’t work, I don’t mind getting rid of it. We’re not gonna make that decision because we’re pandering to employees. That is not the way to build a great company. So count me as a skeptic. Again, Jamie Dimon wants his workers back in the office. I completely understand why someone doesn’t want to commute an hour and a half a day, totally got it. Then again, sounds like me here. doesn’t mean they have to have that job here either. That’s what I say, get all these people complaining where they’re saying, hey, I don’t wanna go back to work. There’s a door, don’t let it hit you in the ass on the way out, you do what the boss says. And he finished by saying, all I ever cared about is my legacy is that people say we’re gonna miss the son of a bitch and he made the world a better place while he was here. Interesting comments and pretty straightforward. And again, I like to see that out of a CEO. But again, the interesting about it is some of the things that he complains about, JPMorgan’s kind of a bit of the problem when it comes to that. And we’ve talked about this for years. The need, you got the FTC, you got Lena Con, that nut job over there trying to break up every tech company when we should be looking to break up true monopolies, which are the too big to fail banks. Watchdog on wallstreet.com. What do you think? See what you can do with that? I don’t know how you…