April 18, 2024 • 26 mins
Emily Chang interviews JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon, a titan in the banking industry known for his freewheeling style, about his outlook on markets, tech and geopolitical risk.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
You run the biggest bank in the world. You have
our money, You've got world leaders on speed dial. That's
a lot of power. How do you decide when and
how to wield that power?
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Yeah, I'm not sure I have a lot of uspeed,
doll Certain you say all that. Sometimes I think I'm
just riding the bronco and hanging out for deal life.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
I'm Emoi Chang and this is the circuit. We're coming
to you from London on a bustling Monday morning, where
I'm heading to sit down with one of the titans
of banking.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
You have a lot of folks from Bloomberg.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Sure, uhh, this is the Jamie Diamond treatment exactly. Jamie
Diamond is an institution head of the largest bank in
the world, JP Morgan Chase. He's got a knack for
whipping companies into shape and cleaning up balance sheets, and
in an era where multiple banks have failed or almost failed,
Diamond has come to the rescue. He ascended to the
(00:52):
top of JP Morgan as a successful deal maker and
leader with some hot takes along the way.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
I could cure less with bitcoin Tree. Howard trades Why
it praised? Who trades it? If you're stupid enough to buy,
you'll pay the price for it.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
One day, I wanted to learn more about the man
behind the banker, to hear more about his philosophy, outlook
on the world, and just how he does it. Joining
me on this edition of The Circuit JP Morgan's CEO
and chair Jamie Diamond. So you're on the road.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
How often actually we checked last year is like one
hundred and twenty nights or something like that, although some
of his COVID catchup. I feel like I need to
visit people.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Right. Do you have any travel hacks?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
What does that mean?
Speaker 1 (01:29):
You know ways to make your life easier?
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yes, well I try when I land, when I exercise,
I eat, when I don't get tortured by people.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Where you're from, I'm from Hawaii originally, Why yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:45):
And married, married.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Children, four kids? Holy?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Holy yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:49):
How do you do it?
Speaker 2 (01:50):
What do you mean?
Speaker 1 (01:51):
How did you juggle it all?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I pretty much had a binary life. I worked and family,
So you didn't see me in black ties and red
carpet some very rare stuff like that. So big family life.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
I've heard you're a family man. I like the Christmas card.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
By the way, my wife does all that.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
I'm super into I do a family Christmas card.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
The girls will get involved in what pictures she could
put in because they all look at how they looked.
Of course I put in wherever you want? And how
old are your kids?
Speaker 1 (02:19):
I have three boys and a girl eleven eight, six four.
The ages change every year, so I have to remind myself.
How about you?
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Do you remember their names? Yes?
Speaker 1 (02:29):
I do remember their name? How old are your daughters now?
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Thirty eight, thirty six, thirty four? And seven grandkids? Six
girls and finally a boy.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Do you babysit?
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Yeah? My wife does more than I do, but I do.
We do it together. They come over, sleepovers and all
that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Any parenting advice just love them? Yeah, yeah, you know.
I thought I would mourn the loss of their youth
as they got older, but it gets more fun.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
It's just no fun once they start talking, arguing, defiant
little things and more sophisticated. They're like in on that
you could take restaurants, not worried about all the neighbors
get mad at you.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
So what do you like to do with your daughters? Now?
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Well? Everything? We barbecue, we eat, we got a restaurants,
we travel, we listen to music. We do wine. I
love my son in laws.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Quite the test. Going to meet Jamie Diamond as your
future father in law.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
They have no problem.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
I'd be shaking in my God knows.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
If I ever say something where I'm wrong, they correct me,
just like they like finding me wrong about something.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Well. I love hearing and help people do it. So
I think that's helpful. Moms and dads, you know, I
tell hope.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
You know, Jamie Morrien, everyone should take her on their
own their mind to buy the spirit. They's all their friends,
their family, their health. They have to do that. It's
part of their life. If you mess that up, you know,
it makes everything else particularly hard. So I heard a
great speech from a woman once. We said you can
have it all. You just can have it all. At
the same time, I like that advice.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
You grew up talking finance at the kitchen table as
a kid. What was it like growing up, Jamie Diamond? Like,
what do you think prepared you for all this?
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Well? I grew up in Jackson, Ice Queen's and my
grandparents three were Greek immigrants, some one was born here.
I don't think any of the four finished high school.
There was a loud table people argue and stuff like that.
But my parents were well, my dad was a stockbroker.
You know, I was the only one who took interest
in that, reading the paper, understanding I put a stock
when I'm twelve, thirteen or fourteen. You know, they didn't
ask us to go into finance. So my older brother
(04:21):
is a physicist, you know, a University of Chicago PhD.
Neils were institute in Denmark for ten or twelve years,
IBM Labs, etc. And my other brother is a teacher.
And so it was basically, do the best you can,
make the world a better place, treat everyone with respect,
have a purpose in life. It was more around that,
but a lot of intellectual debate at the table.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
So going a little bigger picture. Now, you run the
biggest bank in the world. You have our money, You've
got world leaders on speed dial. That's a lot of power.
How do you decide when and how to wield that power?
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yeah, I'm not sure. I have a lot of people
on speed doll. So you say all that, Sometimes I
think I'm just riding the Bronco and hanging out for
deal life. You know, I love what I do. I
try to talk that and I try to keep my
mind open. One of the benefits from traveling the world.
I was just in Mumbai and Switzerland and seeing clients.
You learn a lot and you try to make sure
you're doing a proper assessment of the world, that you're
(05:16):
looking at the options. You're not like just saying we're
going to do this. I looked at as part of
our job to try to help country do the best
they can for their citizens. So we bank countries, we
also advise them on skills and trade and economics. You
look at our research, which is extraordinary. It's a lot
around how is an economy run. So when you go
to like when I got back from Mumbai, we research
one hundred and fifty companies now or something like that.
(05:37):
When I first went there in five maybe we did
twenty companies, you know, And so we're educating the world
about those companies. We're educating the world about the Indian economy.
As we do that, we indicate also educate the Indians
about what works in their economy and what doesn't work,
and those are important things to lift up society.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
You've got this reputation as a sort of white Night
for the economy. Do you ever feel pressure to come
in with the.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Say no, I feel a tremendous amount of pressure to
do Obviously, my family comes first, okay, But to do
a great job for my company and our clients I
travel around also is hugely rewarding for me that we've
lifted people up, we've done a good job. But I
also feel a huge bird to do a good job
for my country. So, you know, when my country wants
me to do something, and we talk all the time
to the senators and regulators, what can we do to
(06:24):
make the system better, to lift up the country, lift
up in the cities. We do a lot of work
inner cities, and you know, on work skills, we do
a lot of work on health equity. We're trying to
figure out how to make society better. And I do
consider that part of our job because if we can
lift up society, that's better for everybody. And so yeah,
I do feel pressure to do that. I look at
that as part of my job. I think about ten
years ago, I said government is a line of business
(06:46):
for us, and I meant it in multiple different ways
that we have to have the time, the effort, you know,
demand power. A lot of our people go all the
time now to make sure we are probably engaged with
the government around the world.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
You've built a bank that's four tillion dollars insets and counting.
How big is too big?
Speaker 2 (07:02):
I think the question is what works for consumers and
industries and stuff like that. So you know, if you
want to build a Boeing aircraft, you have to be big.
You can pretend that you don't if you want to
do what JP Morgan does. We move ten trillion dollars
of money around the world every day. We bank some
of these companies in thirty countries. We bank countries, We
(07:24):
bank the World Bank, the IMF, we bank the United
States government. You have to be big. You can't do
those things and be small. I applaud the small banks.
We're the biggest bank to community banks and regional banks
and stuff like that. And I understand some of the
stress arounder. We're trying to help. So it's not either or.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
JP Morgan's tech footprint has gotten even bigger now that
we've seen clients flood out of SVB. You bought First Republic.
How big is the opportunity to be the new incumbent
bank for startups and vcs and how will you, Jamie Diamond,
manage the risk differently.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Yeah. I think first of all, we didn't want to
benefit in the world by that kind of thing happening,
So it wasn't good for banks or good for us.
Having said that, when that happened, you know, we had
people working around the clock literally to open those accounts.
I recently came from a Sequoia thing. I know a
lot of the benure capitalists you know, Saturday, Sundays through
the nights to onboard these accounts and help them through it.
(08:17):
And we always were there. We always did Okay, I
always want to do better. We're going to We're adding people.
I think the biggest different Silicon Valley Bank before I
get the First Republic is they did a great job
at some of this stuff. So obviously there's certain things
they did on a macro level which weren't right. They
did a lot of things at the micro level that right.
How they dealt with the client, how they service them.
They serve them locally. So we have unbelievable products and
(08:39):
service to bring them digital consumer subscription lines, financing, globality, research,
you name it. But we have to deliver to them
in a way they actually like it and they want it,
which is what Silicon Valley Bank did. So we're organizing
around it. We just took out a whole bunch of
new space in powelt though we hired John Cheena is
one of the top people out of Silicon Valley Bank
organized around the innovation economy. We'll get it right. I
(09:01):
just want to make sure they're happy with us a
year from now, not just just today.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
But what about That's.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
What we do all day long for us. It's incremental risk.
It's a slightly different kind of risk. So you know,
and this happened years ago with a bank lend to
a non revenue company. Well the answer, you know, twenty
years ago was zero. But we did Facebook. So we've
learned how you can do that when you do that.
But again, the risk is it's not the risk, it's
the venture capital company, it's the venture capital partners, it's
(09:30):
the investee companies, it's the investing company's managements, it's that
whole ecosystem. And so we're just organizing around it.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
The financial crisis, the mplosion of SBB, and the recent
banking crisis. What's the lesson you take from THO in
terms of crisis.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Yeah, you know, going way back. I used to do
a presentation on financial crises, you know, going back to
there's blow ups some Gmmy May's Penn Central Commercial paper,
the eighty seven crash, the ninety recession, the seventy four.
If you make a list of all those things, you
really and I'm not making fun of Aaron. They have
all the time. And the best preparation is in our
(10:06):
business capital and liquidity which dot Frank Imperu. We already
had a lot be prepared. You can't be prepared after
the fact. You got to be prepared before the facts.
When I talk about risk management, it's always about the
range of outcomes can handle them.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
You know.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
One of the things they criticize about the stress has
it's one test. We do one hundred a week. I'm
not worried about the one test. And beyond that, we
talk about geopolitical crises, cyber You got to be prepared
for that stuff. And it does happen, and it's going
to surprise you one day, just like well, I'd be surprised,
weil it goes to one fifty. I will not. It
can easily happen if a bunch of factors fallow a
certain way. So the best thing is be prepared for
(10:40):
any business. When you think about risk, think about things
that can go terribly wrong. Can you survive them? You know,
it could be technology, it could be government regulations, it
could be literally the weather. If you're a restaurant, you
know that might close you down. If you if you
lose this week's business, you're out of business. Get enough cash.
So you should think all that through.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Where's China on the list of risks?
Speaker 2 (11:00):
When I say geopolitical, that's the big one. It's the
thread from Ukraine, oil and gas, food, migration, all our relationships,
the most important one being China that is the most
important for the future of the world. Then obviously Ukraine
is affecting it. And in fact it's very hard to
see really positive outcomes with China until the Ukraine War
is resolved, hopefully, whether Ukraine is going to say they
(11:22):
have a victory of some sort.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
You've said you're worried about another Trump presidency.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
How worried, I don't know if I've said that. I'm
hoping the American public. Look, we need good American leadership,
and I think that we need to explain to people
why the this's so important for the world, you know,
and so there's a little bit of this. You know,
America first, and no American president is going to say
America second. But we need to explain is why Ukraine
is important to us, and why American security relies on
(11:50):
global security and why are allies rely on that And
if they can't rely on America, they will have to
rely on someone else. And so I just think it's
very important, you know. Bob writes in his book The
Exercise of Power about the symphony of power and all
the soft things, not the military, which we've overused, but diplomacy, development, finance, education, communication, obviously,
(12:13):
economic trade, investment, all those things. And I think we
need a better job in that.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Given we're in London, you don't see the same wealth
of tech companies that you see in Silicon Valley. They
want more big star tech companies here. Why haven't we
seen that?
Speaker 2 (12:27):
I'd look at the other way around us was the
center of tech, you know, not just Silicon Valley. It's
all over America. I recently came from Boise and other places.
It's staggering. So the dasper has actually moved overseas. I
was recent in Berlin and Paris. There are tech start
ups everywhere now they're quite good. They're more of a
going public and we're the leader of taking them public here.
(12:48):
So I think it's a great thing. And obviously you've
always had it in China, a little bit in India,
still in the Europe is not quite the United States,
but the fact that here is a very good thing.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
So we saw a few tech companies go public. What's
happening in the markets? Are we back or is this
a blimp?
Speaker 2 (13:03):
I think it's open for now for different types of companies,
but you know, you see IPO markets like an accordion.
I think there were like four hundred plus deals in
twenty one and forty and twenty two, and I think
something like fifty or sixty this year. Obviously, interest rates
change a lot. What help you evalue it whether we
go public? The value of cash flows or earnings and
cash counts a little bit more than accounta before. But
(13:23):
for now it's open. Markets are healthy, you know, the
economy is still okay. So it's open. Maybe not for everybody,
but it's open.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
The biggest tech companies prop up a huge chunk of
the SMP is big tech too, big to fail.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
I think that's a too broader question. I think in
any industry, well you say too big to fail, which
I've lost touch with it, that really means anymore because
remember car comes are bailed out and these things are
bailed out, and I don't understand they should ask what
they want. If the regulars don't want a bank to
ever fail again, then we should do ABC D and
E if that's through. I didn't think that was the goal.
(13:59):
I think God Frank actually accomplish most of the goals,
which is dramatically reduced to risks, create liquidity, capital, stuff
like that. So and big tech, you got to be
very specific. You know. Sometimes companies misuse their position and
sometimes they don't. Sometimes regulator is captured and sometimes they don't.
But they're powerful, you know, and we have to deal
with I've been writing about big tech going to our business.
We got fintech, but we also have big tech, and
(14:21):
they will embed payment systems in there and some we're
going to white label banks kind of what Apple did
you know they have the right to do that. I'm
not against that, I would be against unfair use of
their position to dominus in a business.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Bill Gates one said.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Banks of dinosaurs.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Yeah, he said banking is necessary, banks are not. To
what extent could AI or fintech replace traditional banks.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
So I think, first of all, I remember him saying
banks to dinosaurs. I spoke to about it in nineteen
ninety seven, and obviously he was dead wrong. We probably
agree to that, but he's not wrong, you know we
spoke earlier. The technology changes everything, and if anyone is
complacent or arrogant or think that because you have a
big position to day, you're going to position tomorrow, that's
a mistake. Then you have this fine, what is banking.
(15:03):
Someone's going to have to hold the money, someone's going
to have to move the money, someone's to have to
raise the money, someone's going have to do research around money.
Those services will still be around, and hopefully we're doing
it and using a lot of tech to do a
better job at it. But I've always thought it's very
possible that some tech thing, you know, distant intimidates the
piece of that, and I've been quite public. Stripe did
that with part of our payment system. We're still very good.
(15:26):
PayPal did that with some of their stuff. You know,
I'm square PayPal, so I want my own people to
be cognizant. Yeah, we have competitors coming from different angles
who you know, want a piece of our business, and
we're perfectly willing to compete, and we're quite comfortable going
to do. Okay, Well, Apple is.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Going deeper into financial services. Do you worry about the
Bank of Apple.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
I wrote about it. I wrote about it like five
years ago.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
You know what is a bank?
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Well, I'm we're going to compete, so they have they
have a tough competitor. But you know they hold money,
move money, you could put money in a basically you
know markets, but white labor, both checking account, credit card,
you know all these things. Yeah, they're a form of
a competitor. You know, we also partner with them, but
I'm very used to partnering and competing with lots of people.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Existential threat.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
I don't think it's an existential threat, but I think
if we were complacent about it.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Yes, I know you mentioned chat GPT. Have you tried it?
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (16:20):
If I had my phone, i'd show you what do
you use it for?
Speaker 2 (16:23):
I just ask you questions like what I don't remember
which stanbilely chain gonna ask me?
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Did it give you any good answers, Yeah, about tech,
What in tech are you most excited about?
Speaker 2 (16:36):
First, all tech is not new. I mean tech has
been changing the world for one thousands of years, all
different types and my whole life. You know. They invented
mainframes and computers and minis and GPUs and internet and
phones and things like that. They're all been exciting. They've
all changed everything we do. Obviously, the latest thing is
is cloud, digital and AI and it's all real.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Yeah, And so you think it's all real absolutely.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I mean, look, you already look at your phone, what
it does today that it didn't do ten years ago,
How it's LinkedIn et cetera, and a cloud brings unbelievably
compute and power and elastics and analytics. And AI is
what people say it's going to be. It's going to
grow dramatically over time. So we're kind of the tip
of the iceberg.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
You've got a top notch group investigating AI. What are
they up to? What's the next level of finance you
think AI can unlock?
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yeah? So I think the most important thing is that
it's AI is real. We already have thousands of people
doing it, top scientists around their own Manu level Velosa
from who ran Carnegie Mellon machine learning. And it's a
living breathing thing. So people want to answer, what's going
to do. It's a living breathing thing. It's going to change.
They're gonna be all different types of models and different
types of tools and technology. But the way to think
(17:47):
about it for us is every single process, so errors, trading, hedging, research,
every app every database you can to be applying AI.
So it might be as a copilot, it might be
to replace humans, like you know, AI is doing all
the equity headge for us. For the most part, it's
idea generation, it's large language models, it's no taking while
you're talking to someone and while it's taking notes and
(18:08):
may actually say to you that, you know, here's the
thing of interest to climb my Peterson, all error, all
customer service, it's a little bit of everything.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
But it is going to replace some jobs, of course.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Yeah, but look, folks, people have to take a deep breath. Okay,
technologies always replaced jobs. Your children live to one hundred
and not have cancer because of technology, and literally they'll
probably working three and a half days a week. So
technology has done unbelievable things for mankind. But you know,
planes crash, pharmacials get misused. There are negatives. This is
one of the biggest negative of my view, is AI
(18:37):
being used by bad people to do bad things, think
of cyber warfare. And I do think you know, eventually
have legal guardrails around. It's kind of hard to do
because it's new, but it will add a huge value.
And you know, for JP Morgan, if it replaces jobs,
and we hope to redeploy people like at First Republic,
you know, we've offered jobs to like ninety percent of
(18:57):
the people they accepted. But we also so you know,
we've told them as we some of those jobs are transitory,
but we hire thirty thousand people a year, so we
expect to be able to get them a job somewhere
local and a different branch or a different function if
we can do that, and we'll be doing that with
any dislocation that takes place as a result of AI.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
So is there going to be a point where I
can turn to chat JPM and say I have thirty
years or I want to get rich quick? What should
I do with my money?
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Well? Rich quick? I hope it tells you that you're crazy. Yeah,
but we in some ways can do a little bit
ready today. And you know, usually if you look at
like wealth plans that we have, which I think are
quite good, they have a lot of AI embedded than that,
or analytics embedded in that, and I soon I'll have
more AI. All that A is going to do is
know more about you, learn more about you, look at
(19:45):
patterns and you know, look at successful things in the past,
and yeah, so AI will be a huge aid to
things like that. But I really wanted one day. AI
can't be a stock picker because if it make just
make believe I picked every stock, then every stock is
perfectly priced. I would even AI think can't get that
done right.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Interesting, So do you see like a finance super app
in our future or you know, a world where we
could put our money on autopilot?
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Yeah, you already have that a little bit. So ten
years ago I took all of our maybe eight years ago,
the people ran retail, Gordon Smith and a whole team.
I said, you're getting airplane and you're going to China.
And they said, why we're American. I said, go to China,
you know, And they went to Pingyan and ten Sen
and we Chad and Ally pay and all that, and
they had all the super apps. I made them come
back and do a big chart of super apps all
(20:32):
the services they do. So I think in America it
won't be a super app. It'll be I'm gonna call
mini super apps. So you might like, you can already
do a lot of stuff with us around money, but
that's why we do travel. It's an adjacency like your
credit card. And this is what the tech folks did
a very good job. Think about Stripe. They didn't say
you just want to swipe the card and process the payment.
(20:54):
You also want to give the customer data. You want
to make it easier, give them an API so can
embed it directly in their software. That was very smart.
So we're trying to do that too. So it's not
just a credit card. Now we want to offer you
great travel and great hotels and great restaurants. And so
there are all these adjacents here on everything we do
that are tech driven and will be increasing the AI driven.
So think of anything we offer you will be driven
(21:15):
a lot by AI.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
You're revered for your long term view. So I just
like to tick through a few topics quickly and get
a quick sort of one sentence, long term view, what's
your long view on China?
Speaker 2 (21:27):
It'll be okay, but we need really good American leadership
to do that. And don't worry. They're not a ten
foot giant. They have a lot of issues. America's got
a lot of strains. I'd like the fact that American
government's talking to them constantly. Now, crypto, if you mean
crypto like bitcoin, I've always said it's a fraud, there
are no hope for it. Well, I it's if they
think they are a currency, there's no hope for it.
(21:48):
It's a Ponzi scheme. It's a public, decentralized pot. If
it's a crypto coin that can do something like a
smart contract that has value, there will be smart contracts
and blockchain works. So the exten cryptos accessing certain blockchain things, yeah,
that might have some value.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
American leadership.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
The most important thing for the world in the next hundred.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Years is it going to work out?
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Are we going to be okay America? You know, Warren
Buffett would tell you one of the great things about
Americas are constant resiliency, ability to adjust adjust. I mean
we adjusted pretty quickly to bed COVID and then getting
out of COVID and and American leadership moves pretty quickly,
and you know, autocratic leadership gets stasis, so you got
to look at Yeah, sometimes democracy's messy, but it also
(22:30):
allows change.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Jamie Diamond's legacy.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Just I hope I made the world a better place.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
You're sure you're not running for office.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
I just spoke to some friends who left the US
who said if you ran, they'd come back.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
I got four more votes.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
What about AI? Could that be weaponized? Yeah, what's your
biggest AI fear?
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Well, I mean Kerry ks Eric Schmidt wrote a book
about you know, if it gets used in weapons, but
you know, and that obviously could be terrifying if it's
decided and who the enemy is, uh, and then you know,
obviously it's gonna be used in cyber so I put cybers.
You know. I think jaypie W was unbelievable that we've
got great people in constant contact with the government. They
would tell you we're very good at it. It's still
(23:11):
it is really complicated, and AI will be used to breach,
you know, through cyber and so bad guys use AI,
and well, I think we need guardrails. No one knows
exactly they should be yet, but it's not gonna stop
bad guys. So we got to think through the guardrails here.
You want to have play of innovation, need guardrails, like
you know, maybe it'll tell you at the bottom of
somebody that's generated by AI. But the bad guys still
(23:34):
use it. I'm a little concerned about that. But we're
gonna use it to help our customers our business.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
When you look back on your career, what stands out
to you as sort of the top defining moments, like
top three?
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Oh god, I know it's tough. There is There is
no particular one because you know, other people going to
write it and they look at successes and failures and
stuff like that. Uh So again, most important family and
I have three wonderful kids, two wonderful son in law's
seven great grandkids. That that is the most important, you know.
Second most important is my country, the United States of America.
(24:09):
I'm red blooded, full throated, free enterprise American patriot and
don't misunderstand that. And so therefore that is a big
effort of mine personally, and my company stands behind that
to the extent we should. And then in the inside
of the company. Just I just hope people say, you know,
we're going to miss the son of a bitumen. He's gone,
and he made the world a better place, and he
created opportunity and for all of us and our clients.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
What advice would you give your twenty year old self.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
It's the same advice, like, you have to work hard.
I've got that doesn't but work smart. You know a
lot of people they waste so much time and they
don't think carefully. And there's that great quote. I'm sorry
I wrote you such a long letter. I have time
to write a short one that's respect to people. You know.
You get your thoughts together, have a process in place
for decision making. Don't allow yourself to become weaponized like
at all, like you know and don't have it to
(24:56):
the extent I have a temperate works against you. You always
have to end up apologizing. Have a thought process around
things that are complicated, and you'll get better of a life.
You don't have to answer everything all at once.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
What else do you want to accomplish in the world,
aside from making your bank succeed.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
I would like to do the best I can for
the world and my country. While I'm around well.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
We appreciate you doing your best for us today. Jamie,
thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Emily, thank you. Good luck to everybody.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Thanks so much for listening to this podcast edition of
the Circuit. And if you want to watch my conversation
with Jamie Diamond and my trip to London, just check
out the full video episode. I'm Emily Chang. You can
follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Emily Chang TV.
You can watch new episodes of the Circuit on Bloomberg
Television or on demand by downloading the Bloomberg app to
your smart TV, and check out other Bloomberg podcasts on
(25:50):
Apple Podcasts, the iHeartMedia app, or wherever. You listen to
your shows and let us know what you think by
leaving us a review. I'm your host and executive producer.
Our senior producers Lauren Ellis and Alan Jeffries. Our associate
producer is Tyler Kotta. Our editor is Alison Casey. Thanks
so much for listening.
You run the biggest bank in the world. You have
our money, You've got world leaders on speed dial. That's
a lot of power. How do you decide when and
how to wield that power?
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Yeah, I'm not sure I have a lot of uspeed,
doll Certain you say all that. Sometimes I think I'm
just riding the bronco and hanging out for deal life.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
I'm Emoi Chang and this is the circuit. We're coming
to you from London on a bustling Monday morning, where
I'm heading to sit down with one of the titans
of banking.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
You have a lot of folks from Bloomberg.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Sure, uhh, this is the Jamie Diamond treatment exactly. Jamie
Diamond is an institution head of the largest bank in
the world, JP Morgan Chase. He's got a knack for
whipping companies into shape and cleaning up balance sheets, and
in an era where multiple banks have failed or almost failed,
Diamond has come to the rescue. He ascended to the
(00:52):
top of JP Morgan as a successful deal maker and
leader with some hot takes along the way.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
I could cure less with bitcoin Tree. Howard trades Why
it praised? Who trades it? If you're stupid enough to buy,
you'll pay the price for it.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
One day, I wanted to learn more about the man
behind the banker, to hear more about his philosophy, outlook
on the world, and just how he does it. Joining
me on this edition of The Circuit JP Morgan's CEO
and chair Jamie Diamond. So you're on the road.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
How often actually we checked last year is like one
hundred and twenty nights or something like that, although some
of his COVID catchup. I feel like I need to
visit people.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Right. Do you have any travel hacks?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
What does that mean?
Speaker 1 (01:29):
You know ways to make your life easier?
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yes, well I try when I land, when I exercise,
I eat, when I don't get tortured by people.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Where you're from, I'm from Hawaii originally, Why yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:45):
And married, married.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Children, four kids? Holy?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Holy yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:49):
How do you do it?
Speaker 2 (01:50):
What do you mean?
Speaker 1 (01:51):
How did you juggle it all?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I pretty much had a binary life. I worked and family,
So you didn't see me in black ties and red
carpet some very rare stuff like that. So big family life.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
I've heard you're a family man. I like the Christmas card.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
By the way, my wife does all that.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
I'm super into I do a family Christmas card.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
The girls will get involved in what pictures she could
put in because they all look at how they looked.
Of course I put in wherever you want? And how
old are your kids?
Speaker 1 (02:19):
I have three boys and a girl eleven eight, six four.
The ages change every year, so I have to remind myself.
How about you?
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Do you remember their names? Yes?
Speaker 1 (02:29):
I do remember their name? How old are your daughters now?
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Thirty eight, thirty six, thirty four? And seven grandkids? Six
girls and finally a boy.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Do you babysit?
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Yeah? My wife does more than I do, but I do.
We do it together. They come over, sleepovers and all
that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Any parenting advice just love them? Yeah, yeah, you know.
I thought I would mourn the loss of their youth
as they got older, but it gets more fun.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
It's just no fun once they start talking, arguing, defiant
little things and more sophisticated. They're like in on that
you could take restaurants, not worried about all the neighbors
get mad at you.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
So what do you like to do with your daughters? Now?
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Well? Everything? We barbecue, we eat, we got a restaurants,
we travel, we listen to music. We do wine. I
love my son in laws.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Quite the test. Going to meet Jamie Diamond as your
future father in law.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
They have no problem.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
I'd be shaking in my God knows.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
If I ever say something where I'm wrong, they correct me,
just like they like finding me wrong about something.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Well. I love hearing and help people do it. So
I think that's helpful. Moms and dads, you know, I
tell hope.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
You know, Jamie Morrien, everyone should take her on their
own their mind to buy the spirit. They's all their friends,
their family, their health. They have to do that. It's
part of their life. If you mess that up, you know,
it makes everything else particularly hard. So I heard a
great speech from a woman once. We said you can
have it all. You just can have it all. At
the same time, I like that advice.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
You grew up talking finance at the kitchen table as
a kid. What was it like growing up, Jamie Diamond? Like,
what do you think prepared you for all this?
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Well? I grew up in Jackson, Ice Queen's and my
grandparents three were Greek immigrants, some one was born here.
I don't think any of the four finished high school.
There was a loud table people argue and stuff like that.
But my parents were well, my dad was a stockbroker.
You know, I was the only one who took interest
in that, reading the paper, understanding I put a stock
when I'm twelve, thirteen or fourteen. You know, they didn't
ask us to go into finance. So my older brother
(04:21):
is a physicist, you know, a University of Chicago PhD.
Neils were institute in Denmark for ten or twelve years,
IBM Labs, etc. And my other brother is a teacher.
And so it was basically, do the best you can,
make the world a better place, treat everyone with respect,
have a purpose in life. It was more around that,
but a lot of intellectual debate at the table.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
So going a little bigger picture. Now, you run the
biggest bank in the world. You have our money, You've
got world leaders on speed dial. That's a lot of power.
How do you decide when and how to wield that power?
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yeah, I'm not sure. I have a lot of people
on speed doll. So you say all that, Sometimes I
think I'm just riding the Bronco and hanging out for
deal life. You know, I love what I do. I
try to talk that and I try to keep my
mind open. One of the benefits from traveling the world.
I was just in Mumbai and Switzerland and seeing clients.
You learn a lot and you try to make sure
you're doing a proper assessment of the world, that you're
(05:16):
looking at the options. You're not like just saying we're
going to do this. I looked at as part of
our job to try to help country do the best
they can for their citizens. So we bank countries, we
also advise them on skills and trade and economics. You
look at our research, which is extraordinary. It's a lot
around how is an economy run. So when you go
to like when I got back from Mumbai, we research
one hundred and fifty companies now or something like that.
(05:37):
When I first went there in five maybe we did
twenty companies, you know, And so we're educating the world
about those companies. We're educating the world about the Indian economy.
As we do that, we indicate also educate the Indians
about what works in their economy and what doesn't work,
and those are important things to lift up society.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
You've got this reputation as a sort of white Night
for the economy. Do you ever feel pressure to come
in with the.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Say no, I feel a tremendous amount of pressure to
do Obviously, my family comes first, okay, But to do
a great job for my company and our clients I
travel around also is hugely rewarding for me that we've
lifted people up, we've done a good job. But I
also feel a huge bird to do a good job
for my country. So, you know, when my country wants
me to do something, and we talk all the time
to the senators and regulators, what can we do to
(06:24):
make the system better, to lift up the country, lift
up in the cities. We do a lot of work
inner cities, and you know, on work skills, we do
a lot of work on health equity. We're trying to
figure out how to make society better. And I do
consider that part of our job because if we can
lift up society, that's better for everybody. And so yeah,
I do feel pressure to do that. I look at
that as part of my job. I think about ten
years ago, I said government is a line of business
(06:46):
for us, and I meant it in multiple different ways
that we have to have the time, the effort, you know,
demand power. A lot of our people go all the
time now to make sure we are probably engaged with
the government around the world.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
You've built a bank that's four tillion dollars insets and counting.
How big is too big?
Speaker 2 (07:02):
I think the question is what works for consumers and
industries and stuff like that. So you know, if you
want to build a Boeing aircraft, you have to be big.
You can pretend that you don't if you want to
do what JP Morgan does. We move ten trillion dollars
of money around the world every day. We bank some
of these companies in thirty countries. We bank countries, We
(07:24):
bank the World Bank, the IMF, we bank the United
States government. You have to be big. You can't do
those things and be small. I applaud the small banks.
We're the biggest bank to community banks and regional banks
and stuff like that. And I understand some of the
stress arounder. We're trying to help. So it's not either or.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
JP Morgan's tech footprint has gotten even bigger now that
we've seen clients flood out of SVB. You bought First Republic.
How big is the opportunity to be the new incumbent
bank for startups and vcs and how will you, Jamie Diamond,
manage the risk differently.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Yeah. I think first of all, we didn't want to
benefit in the world by that kind of thing happening,
So it wasn't good for banks or good for us.
Having said that, when that happened, you know, we had
people working around the clock literally to open those accounts.
I recently came from a Sequoia thing. I know a
lot of the benure capitalists you know, Saturday, Sundays through
the nights to onboard these accounts and help them through it.
(08:17):
And we always were there. We always did Okay, I
always want to do better. We're going to We're adding people.
I think the biggest different Silicon Valley Bank before I
get the First Republic is they did a great job
at some of this stuff. So obviously there's certain things
they did on a macro level which weren't right. They
did a lot of things at the micro level that right.
How they dealt with the client, how they service them.
They serve them locally. So we have unbelievable products and
(08:39):
service to bring them digital consumer subscription lines, financing, globality, research,
you name it. But we have to deliver to them
in a way they actually like it and they want it,
which is what Silicon Valley Bank did. So we're organizing
around it. We just took out a whole bunch of
new space in powelt though we hired John Cheena is
one of the top people out of Silicon Valley Bank
organized around the innovation economy. We'll get it right. I
(09:01):
just want to make sure they're happy with us a
year from now, not just just today.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
But what about That's.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
What we do all day long for us. It's incremental risk.
It's a slightly different kind of risk. So you know,
and this happened years ago with a bank lend to
a non revenue company. Well the answer, you know, twenty
years ago was zero. But we did Facebook. So we've
learned how you can do that when you do that.
But again, the risk is it's not the risk, it's
the venture capital company, it's the venture capital partners, it's
(09:30):
the investee companies, it's the investing company's managements, it's that
whole ecosystem. And so we're just organizing around it.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
The financial crisis, the mplosion of SBB, and the recent
banking crisis. What's the lesson you take from THO in
terms of crisis.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Yeah, you know, going way back. I used to do
a presentation on financial crises, you know, going back to
there's blow ups some Gmmy May's Penn Central Commercial paper,
the eighty seven crash, the ninety recession, the seventy four.
If you make a list of all those things, you
really and I'm not making fun of Aaron. They have
all the time. And the best preparation is in our
(10:06):
business capital and liquidity which dot Frank Imperu. We already
had a lot be prepared. You can't be prepared after
the fact. You got to be prepared before the facts.
When I talk about risk management, it's always about the
range of outcomes can handle them.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
You know.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
One of the things they criticize about the stress has
it's one test. We do one hundred a week. I'm
not worried about the one test. And beyond that, we
talk about geopolitical crises, cyber You got to be prepared
for that stuff. And it does happen, and it's going
to surprise you one day, just like well, I'd be surprised,
weil it goes to one fifty. I will not. It
can easily happen if a bunch of factors fallow a
certain way. So the best thing is be prepared for
(10:40):
any business. When you think about risk, think about things
that can go terribly wrong. Can you survive them? You know,
it could be technology, it could be government regulations, it
could be literally the weather. If you're a restaurant, you
know that might close you down. If you if you
lose this week's business, you're out of business. Get enough cash.
So you should think all that through.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Where's China on the list of risks?
Speaker 2 (11:00):
When I say geopolitical, that's the big one. It's the
thread from Ukraine, oil and gas, food, migration, all our relationships,
the most important one being China that is the most
important for the future of the world. Then obviously Ukraine
is affecting it. And in fact it's very hard to
see really positive outcomes with China until the Ukraine War
is resolved, hopefully, whether Ukraine is going to say they
(11:22):
have a victory of some sort.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
You've said you're worried about another Trump presidency.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
How worried, I don't know if I've said that. I'm
hoping the American public. Look, we need good American leadership,
and I think that we need to explain to people
why the this's so important for the world, you know,
and so there's a little bit of this. You know,
America first, and no American president is going to say
America second. But we need to explain is why Ukraine
is important to us, and why American security relies on
(11:50):
global security and why are allies rely on that And
if they can't rely on America, they will have to
rely on someone else. And so I just think it's
very important, you know. Bob writes in his book The
Exercise of Power about the symphony of power and all
the soft things, not the military, which we've overused, but diplomacy, development, finance, education, communication, obviously,
(12:13):
economic trade, investment, all those things. And I think we
need a better job in that.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Given we're in London, you don't see the same wealth
of tech companies that you see in Silicon Valley. They
want more big star tech companies here. Why haven't we
seen that?
Speaker 2 (12:27):
I'd look at the other way around us was the
center of tech, you know, not just Silicon Valley. It's
all over America. I recently came from Boise and other places.
It's staggering. So the dasper has actually moved overseas. I
was recent in Berlin and Paris. There are tech start
ups everywhere now they're quite good. They're more of a
going public and we're the leader of taking them public here.
(12:48):
So I think it's a great thing. And obviously you've
always had it in China, a little bit in India,
still in the Europe is not quite the United States,
but the fact that here is a very good thing.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
So we saw a few tech companies go public. What's
happening in the markets? Are we back or is this
a blimp?
Speaker 2 (13:03):
I think it's open for now for different types of companies,
but you know, you see IPO markets like an accordion.
I think there were like four hundred plus deals in
twenty one and forty and twenty two, and I think
something like fifty or sixty this year. Obviously, interest rates
change a lot. What help you evalue it whether we
go public? The value of cash flows or earnings and
cash counts a little bit more than accounta before. But
(13:23):
for now it's open. Markets are healthy, you know, the
economy is still okay. So it's open. Maybe not for everybody,
but it's open.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
The biggest tech companies prop up a huge chunk of
the SMP is big tech too, big to fail.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
I think that's a too broader question. I think in
any industry, well you say too big to fail, which
I've lost touch with it, that really means anymore because
remember car comes are bailed out and these things are
bailed out, and I don't understand they should ask what
they want. If the regulars don't want a bank to
ever fail again, then we should do ABC D and
E if that's through. I didn't think that was the goal.
(13:59):
I think God Frank actually accomplish most of the goals,
which is dramatically reduced to risks, create liquidity, capital, stuff
like that. So and big tech, you got to be
very specific. You know. Sometimes companies misuse their position and
sometimes they don't. Sometimes regulator is captured and sometimes they don't.
But they're powerful, you know, and we have to deal
with I've been writing about big tech going to our business.
We got fintech, but we also have big tech, and
(14:21):
they will embed payment systems in there and some we're
going to white label banks kind of what Apple did
you know they have the right to do that. I'm
not against that, I would be against unfair use of
their position to dominus in a business.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Bill Gates one said.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Banks of dinosaurs.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Yeah, he said banking is necessary, banks are not. To
what extent could AI or fintech replace traditional banks.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
So I think, first of all, I remember him saying
banks to dinosaurs. I spoke to about it in nineteen
ninety seven, and obviously he was dead wrong. We probably
agree to that, but he's not wrong, you know we
spoke earlier. The technology changes everything, and if anyone is
complacent or arrogant or think that because you have a
big position to day, you're going to position tomorrow, that's
a mistake. Then you have this fine, what is banking.
(15:03):
Someone's going to have to hold the money, someone's going
to have to move the money, someone's to have to
raise the money, someone's going have to do research around money.
Those services will still be around, and hopefully we're doing
it and using a lot of tech to do a
better job at it. But I've always thought it's very
possible that some tech thing, you know, distant intimidates the
piece of that, and I've been quite public. Stripe did
that with part of our payment system. We're still very good.
(15:26):
PayPal did that with some of their stuff. You know,
I'm square PayPal, so I want my own people to
be cognizant. Yeah, we have competitors coming from different angles
who you know, want a piece of our business, and
we're perfectly willing to compete, and we're quite comfortable going
to do. Okay, Well, Apple is.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Going deeper into financial services. Do you worry about the
Bank of Apple.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
I wrote about it. I wrote about it like five
years ago.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
You know what is a bank?
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Well, I'm we're going to compete, so they have they
have a tough competitor. But you know they hold money,
move money, you could put money in a basically you
know markets, but white labor, both checking account, credit card,
you know all these things. Yeah, they're a form of
a competitor. You know, we also partner with them, but
I'm very used to partnering and competing with lots of people.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Existential threat.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
I don't think it's an existential threat, but I think
if we were complacent about it.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Yes, I know you mentioned chat GPT. Have you tried it?
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (16:20):
If I had my phone, i'd show you what do
you use it for?
Speaker 2 (16:23):
I just ask you questions like what I don't remember
which stanbilely chain gonna ask me?
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Did it give you any good answers, Yeah, about tech,
What in tech are you most excited about?
Speaker 2 (16:36):
First, all tech is not new. I mean tech has
been changing the world for one thousands of years, all
different types and my whole life. You know. They invented
mainframes and computers and minis and GPUs and internet and
phones and things like that. They're all been exciting. They've
all changed everything we do. Obviously, the latest thing is
is cloud, digital and AI and it's all real.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Yeah, And so you think it's all real absolutely.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I mean, look, you already look at your phone, what
it does today that it didn't do ten years ago,
How it's LinkedIn et cetera, and a cloud brings unbelievably
compute and power and elastics and analytics. And AI is
what people say it's going to be. It's going to
grow dramatically over time. So we're kind of the tip
of the iceberg.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
You've got a top notch group investigating AI. What are
they up to? What's the next level of finance you
think AI can unlock?
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yeah? So I think the most important thing is that
it's AI is real. We already have thousands of people
doing it, top scientists around their own Manu level Velosa
from who ran Carnegie Mellon machine learning. And it's a
living breathing thing. So people want to answer, what's going
to do. It's a living breathing thing. It's going to change.
They're gonna be all different types of models and different
types of tools and technology. But the way to think
(17:47):
about it for us is every single process, so errors, trading, hedging, research,
every app every database you can to be applying AI.
So it might be as a copilot, it might be
to replace humans, like you know, AI is doing all
the equity headge for us. For the most part, it's
idea generation, it's large language models, it's no taking while
you're talking to someone and while it's taking notes and
(18:08):
may actually say to you that, you know, here's the
thing of interest to climb my Peterson, all error, all
customer service, it's a little bit of everything.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
But it is going to replace some jobs, of course.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Yeah, but look, folks, people have to take a deep breath. Okay,
technologies always replaced jobs. Your children live to one hundred
and not have cancer because of technology, and literally they'll
probably working three and a half days a week. So
technology has done unbelievable things for mankind. But you know,
planes crash, pharmacials get misused. There are negatives. This is
one of the biggest negative of my view, is AI
(18:37):
being used by bad people to do bad things, think
of cyber warfare. And I do think you know, eventually
have legal guardrails around. It's kind of hard to do
because it's new, but it will add a huge value.
And you know, for JP Morgan, if it replaces jobs,
and we hope to redeploy people like at First Republic,
you know, we've offered jobs to like ninety percent of
(18:57):
the people they accepted. But we also so you know,
we've told them as we some of those jobs are transitory,
but we hire thirty thousand people a year, so we
expect to be able to get them a job somewhere
local and a different branch or a different function if
we can do that, and we'll be doing that with
any dislocation that takes place as a result of AI.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
So is there going to be a point where I
can turn to chat JPM and say I have thirty
years or I want to get rich quick? What should
I do with my money?
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Well? Rich quick? I hope it tells you that you're crazy. Yeah,
but we in some ways can do a little bit
ready today. And you know, usually if you look at
like wealth plans that we have, which I think are
quite good, they have a lot of AI embedded than that,
or analytics embedded in that, and I soon I'll have
more AI. All that A is going to do is
know more about you, learn more about you, look at
(19:45):
patterns and you know, look at successful things in the past,
and yeah, so AI will be a huge aid to
things like that. But I really wanted one day. AI
can't be a stock picker because if it make just
make believe I picked every stock, then every stock is
perfectly priced. I would even AI think can't get that
done right.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Interesting, So do you see like a finance super app
in our future or you know, a world where we
could put our money on autopilot?
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Yeah, you already have that a little bit. So ten
years ago I took all of our maybe eight years ago,
the people ran retail, Gordon Smith and a whole team.
I said, you're getting airplane and you're going to China.
And they said, why we're American. I said, go to China,
you know, And they went to Pingyan and ten Sen
and we Chad and Ally pay and all that, and
they had all the super apps. I made them come
back and do a big chart of super apps all
(20:32):
the services they do. So I think in America it
won't be a super app. It'll be I'm gonna call
mini super apps. So you might like, you can already
do a lot of stuff with us around money, but
that's why we do travel. It's an adjacency like your
credit card. And this is what the tech folks did
a very good job. Think about Stripe. They didn't say
you just want to swipe the card and process the payment.
(20:54):
You also want to give the customer data. You want
to make it easier, give them an API so can
embed it directly in their software. That was very smart.
So we're trying to do that too. So it's not
just a credit card. Now we want to offer you
great travel and great hotels and great restaurants. And so
there are all these adjacents here on everything we do
that are tech driven and will be increasing the AI driven.
So think of anything we offer you will be driven
(21:15):
a lot by AI.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
You're revered for your long term view. So I just
like to tick through a few topics quickly and get
a quick sort of one sentence, long term view, what's
your long view on China?
Speaker 2 (21:27):
It'll be okay, but we need really good American leadership
to do that. And don't worry. They're not a ten
foot giant. They have a lot of issues. America's got
a lot of strains. I'd like the fact that American
government's talking to them constantly. Now, crypto, if you mean
crypto like bitcoin, I've always said it's a fraud, there
are no hope for it. Well, I it's if they
think they are a currency, there's no hope for it.
(21:48):
It's a Ponzi scheme. It's a public, decentralized pot. If
it's a crypto coin that can do something like a
smart contract that has value, there will be smart contracts
and blockchain works. So the exten cryptos accessing certain blockchain things, yeah,
that might have some value.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
American leadership.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
The most important thing for the world in the next hundred.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Years is it going to work out?
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Are we going to be okay America? You know, Warren
Buffett would tell you one of the great things about
Americas are constant resiliency, ability to adjust adjust. I mean
we adjusted pretty quickly to bed COVID and then getting
out of COVID and and American leadership moves pretty quickly,
and you know, autocratic leadership gets stasis, so you got
to look at Yeah, sometimes democracy's messy, but it also
(22:30):
allows change.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Jamie Diamond's legacy.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Just I hope I made the world a better place.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
You're sure you're not running for office.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
I just spoke to some friends who left the US
who said if you ran, they'd come back.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
I got four more votes.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
What about AI? Could that be weaponized? Yeah, what's your
biggest AI fear?
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Well, I mean Kerry ks Eric Schmidt wrote a book
about you know, if it gets used in weapons, but
you know, and that obviously could be terrifying if it's
decided and who the enemy is, uh, and then you know,
obviously it's gonna be used in cyber so I put cybers.
You know. I think jaypie W was unbelievable that we've
got great people in constant contact with the government. They
would tell you we're very good at it. It's still
(23:11):
it is really complicated, and AI will be used to breach,
you know, through cyber and so bad guys use AI,
and well, I think we need guardrails. No one knows
exactly they should be yet, but it's not gonna stop
bad guys. So we got to think through the guardrails here.
You want to have play of innovation, need guardrails, like
you know, maybe it'll tell you at the bottom of
somebody that's generated by AI. But the bad guys still
(23:34):
use it. I'm a little concerned about that. But we're
gonna use it to help our customers our business.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
When you look back on your career, what stands out
to you as sort of the top defining moments, like
top three?
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Oh god, I know it's tough. There is There is
no particular one because you know, other people going to
write it and they look at successes and failures and
stuff like that. Uh So again, most important family and
I have three wonderful kids, two wonderful son in law's
seven great grandkids. That that is the most important, you know.
Second most important is my country, the United States of America.
(24:09):
I'm red blooded, full throated, free enterprise American patriot and
don't misunderstand that. And so therefore that is a big
effort of mine personally, and my company stands behind that
to the extent we should. And then in the inside
of the company. Just I just hope people say, you know,
we're going to miss the son of a bitumen. He's gone,
and he made the world a better place, and he
created opportunity and for all of us and our clients.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
What advice would you give your twenty year old self.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
It's the same advice, like, you have to work hard.
I've got that doesn't but work smart. You know a
lot of people they waste so much time and they
don't think carefully. And there's that great quote. I'm sorry
I wrote you such a long letter. I have time
to write a short one that's respect to people. You know.
You get your thoughts together, have a process in place
for decision making. Don't allow yourself to become weaponized like
at all, like you know and don't have it to
(24:56):
the extent I have a temperate works against you. You always
have to end up apologizing. Have a thought process around
things that are complicated, and you'll get better of a life.
You don't have to answer everything all at once.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
What else do you want to accomplish in the world,
aside from making your bank succeed.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
I would like to do the best I can for
the world and my country. While I'm around well.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
We appreciate you doing your best for us today. Jamie,
thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Emily, thank you. Good luck to everybody.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Thanks so much for listening to this podcast edition of
the Circuit. And if you want to watch my conversation
with Jamie Diamond and my trip to London, just check
out the full video episode. I'm Emily Chang. You can
follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Emily Chang TV.
You can watch new episodes of the Circuit on Bloomberg
Television or on demand by downloading the Bloomberg app to
your smart TV, and check out other Bloomberg podcasts on
(25:50):
Apple Podcasts, the iHeartMedia app, or wherever. You listen to
your shows and let us know what you think by
leaving us a review. I'm your host and executive producer.
Our senior producers Lauren Ellis and Alan Jeffries. Our associate
producer is Tyler Kotta. Our editor is Alison Casey. Thanks
so much for listening.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.