No good afternoon ladies and gentlemen delighted to welcome all of you here and to all of us who are watching online to our friends in the press what a honor and delight it is for me to host Jamie Dimon who's sitting here to my right as all of you know he's the CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase he oversees it's funny you know there are days when I feel sort of feeling sorry for myself because I have 280 employees and a budget of 50 million dollars jamie has 250,000 employees and 200 and 2.5 trillion dollars in assets I will never complain again he is an entrepreneur who has truly you know in bodies the spirit of something we talk about a lot in AEI which is to live a startup life you know the essence of entrepreneurship is understanding your life as an enterprise he started by selling greeting cards at the age of six and by the age of 40 was one of the preeminent chief executives in the United States a place where he's remained and and enhanced his reputation not just as somebody who's a visionary in business but also somebody who's a true idea person a man who understands policy and wants to bring better ideas to policy things he learns in business and things that he observes around the country this we're gonna be talking about today so delighted to have you Jamie welcome to our stage in the new AEI building thank you for having me here thank you you know a lot of people here and we can't see the people who are watching us online but we've a big audience online and a lot of people have been very interested in your a lot of the things that you're doing because you're spending more time in Washington DC why are you coming to Washington so often these days well first I always came to Washington remember I have my regulators down here which I have many and obviously we do stuff in the Senate and his best friends and the administration they also became the chairman the Business Roundtable oh yeah so which is a - one of the largest companies in America it's an advocacy group around policy you know immigration trade taxation corporate governance work skills initiatives and I agreed to do the Act think it's really important for the future of America we get those policies right so the the BRT the business round is not something that people typically associate with policy they think of it as an industry trade group to promote the the needs and interests of business per se you do see it differently why do you see it as a policy yeah because member industry further there's like with 7,000 lobby groups here and in this town it's like 7 million I think everybody and but and the fact is every group has its own so life insurance has its own you know manufactures their own motion pictures has its own but this one is the purpose is broad public policy taxation immigration trade smart regulation corporate governance things which I think are very good for the future of America is very good for growing it and we try to be not parochial so we're not trying to fight for Bank regulations I've never spoken to group about and everything about bank regulation on those other policies what's good for America why we should get those policies done how we can get to get them over the hill so tell me what are the big policy issues that are front of mine for you today and I'm gonna walk through a whole bunch of them but tell me the one that's keeping you awake at night the most what's give me up no I I'm gonna put immigration on that but I think it's kind of tearing us apart mm-hmm I think we'd be growing faster would be a happier nation I think most Americans actually agree you know we should have merit-based if you get an advanced degree here you get to stay some pants the citizenship for law-abiding taxpaying undocumented and I think most Americans actually grew with that we need border security I think a statement that we haven't really had good border security I don't know what that means a wall I'm not an expert but I think the American public needs bull we have good border security and the last one I say is cultural there's this kind of fear in America that immigrants are coming here to change America not coming here to be American so you know my grandparents are immigrants I'm sure a lot of people here your grandparents great-grandparents immigrants they came here to be American they you know they've learned American history they learned the Pledge of Allegiance they learned about America as an idea of freedom freedom of speech freedom of enterprise from a religion it was not a tribe you know it wasn't and that is an important thing and we violate that a little bit not a lot so if we get it fixed we'll be happier people you're a lot happier Americans and we'll have a faster growing economy and we're going to need the workers by the way if you look at the workforce we know we don't have enough workers to fill some of these jobs anymore tell me what what your grandfather your grandfather diamond did when he came the United States yeah my grandfather well he's like everybody else he he didn't finish high school I'll be getting my grandparents finished high school they may have been undocumented for I know but he you know worked as a dishwasher he went to move to degree I'm Greek Greek part of town you know he only only taught English in school so he had to learn English pretty quickly and he kind of worked his way up and he eventually started working at a bank and he became a VP at the bank and after World War two he went to become a stockbroker mmm my father became a stockbroker it kind of would pique my interest in in financial markets etc and and he's great man so the reason I asked that question is because you know that's the I mean look around this room and we see a hundred different immigrant stories here they're all different you know scratching out a living in Greece and in your case or you know running from a pogrom in the case of a lot of my colleagues here at AEI or or in some of the cases is being brought to this country and voluntarily but what everybody has in common is that they're they came from ambitious riffraff yeah that's the American experience so do we really want more of a merit-based system we just want more people that are destroyers oh you want a merit-based system too we I think the number is 300,000 kids come here from around the world they get degrees and our great universities and advanced degrees and we fundamentally make them go home and I think you agree with me we should give all the green card they that is sending brains overseas that kind of wants to stay here and you see happening now the people building in R&D centers in Vancouver and Toronto because of very kids who educated here can't work here so you know some of these companies are putting their research centers and trying to and I just don't know why we wouldn't grow up a little bit in that it's any brains overseas as a bad idea just like I put corporate taxes which was fixed corporate separate the individual okay I think people have to understand the corporate taxes we need a competitive tax system to have a competitive economy period the notion you have a very uncompetitive tax system in this global world of ours is wrong and so that we were driving a lot of companies overseas and capital overseas and plants overseas not everybody but a lot of those who can choose we're doing that and on the individual side you can argue what we should have done you know and so with the business community get involved in that part of the fight but competive taxes to me that's the center corn on for the economy so we're talking about capital flows we started with labor flows and before before before we leave that subject is it fair to say that you're pretty critical and concerned with the way that the country is turned with respect to immigration policy but more importantly about immigration culture yeah I think the culture is an issue you know and I I hope president Trump but I've been with President Trump he says I want to do the green cards I want to find I want doctor to stay he also says but you know I want the wall and you know so that's the politics of immigration you know I'm not that it's in the politics I think we should treat the 12 million people here who were who were taxpaying and law-abiding properly path to citizenship it's a long path they have to basically at the end of the line you know giving legal status keep Doctor Doom eridan I think would just be a better nation guest-worker program absolutely uh-huh okay so let's get back to tax reform we just started on that and that's a path that we do need to go down it's been six or seven months since we had tax reform in this country it was a happy day around 80 I in no small part because a lot of the ideas that when to the tax reform legislation were hatched by economists here at AEI the politics of it resulted in a pretty complicated piece of legislation you were on net Pro right oh no I was a pro tax reform and why do you weigh me the most because it was Drive all of these if you had a choice so some people have been on national TV saying it didn't affect any business decisions I make that's true if you're an American only company it didn't basically fundamentally affect your decisions it gave you less capital to reinvest but if you are a large company and you have a choice to invest in a plant overseas or plant here at 20 percent tax rate you had a 50 percent higher return okay and there are studies that one of the big accounting firms did that estimated 5000 companies large to small so now told big companies net are now owned by overseas companies because advantageous for a couple overseas to own that company here so the headquarters now overseas that's a bad idea so my point is had a competitive tax system you'll have the best economy and the benefit and the other thing you hear about all the time is which I agree with part of part of the benefit was immediate you did see people raise wages cut medical deductibles and now some new investments and branches which we did you know 40 new branches including you're coming to we want all your accounts by the way they got the best stuff no small business small business lending for entrepreneurs of color so we did that a lot of companies did it but the real benefit is the retention of capital reinvested in the United States over time and that's a cumulative effect okay and you're going to see some of that over time and you know the can't you'll never know exactly the counterfactuals but the thing I strongly disagree with is this this refrain this narrative that comes out that they're just doing thought buybacks and dividends capital is the kind of thing that if you can't use it you would turn it to your shareholder it doesn't disappear the shareholder reuses it they may invest in a venture thing they may invest in a company they may go buy a house but in any event it's like a free QE it's not from the government it's our own money recirculating the economy and so it's a good thing though we don't know what the immediate effect that is but the real long-term cumulative effect is hugely positive on the individual side they eliminated you know state and local I know you probably in Washington don't like that your Massachusetts New York Illinois or California but everybody else likes it the and the thing about state local 80% of the benefit went to people make it over five hundred thousand dollars a year they did the right thing to get rid of it I'm sorry and all my friends in New York I've furiously me all the time for saying this and now I would have done things differently an individual so I probably would have not reduced taxes and people like me I would have tax carried interest I would have died double the Earned Income Tax Credit to make you know a low-skilled job more of a living wage to give people the dignity of a job the ability to do more of that and so I might have done something differently in the individual side but absolutely we needed to competitive tax reform I would also do an infrastructure is another one and now we put a man on the moon in eight years and now takes twelve years and I don't consider this funny though you're all gonna laugh to get the permits to build a bridge that's the can-do nation of America so our highways bridges tunnels airports we are getting old it nailed by most the Conner's estimates as cost as more money not to fix it than to fix it we created this huge regulatory burden to get permits and build bridges and if we don't fix it it's hurting us and again the estimates I say point two point three percent of your GDP so one of my big things I think the reason our anemic growth was so slow is because of our decisions it wasn't it doesn't have to be slow it wasn't a secular stagnation it was immigration taxation infrastructure education the opioid crisis which we have to do be much more aggressive in fixing lots to talk about that's you know you're traveling around United States all the time you're talking to given the fact that your business is so cross-hatched with community banks and smaller banks and and and of course the rest of the economy that relies on banking you predicted before tax reform that it was going to have a stimulatory impact on downstream on lots and lots of businesses do you see it yeah I mean it's kind of anecdotal but when I travel around to small businesses middle market companies large companies most of them not all of them most say we have seen will regulatory reform and we're doing more stuff we're building this this road we're building this pipeline when I'm opening a new store so yeah we have seen it and you see it and there's another place by the way consumer and business confidence skyrocketed but then skyrocketed everyone loves the president skyrockets people are pro-business pro-capital pro-growth and pro regulatory reform and one is the word regulatory reform meaning killed a bureaucracy okay the bureaucracy we have allowed the some of these regulatory bureaucratic things to really slow down or our thing think of the DMV think of the VA well that's what's happened that would happen to business so small business formation in this recovery was the lowest it's ever been okay and and it could be in the order of a million small business at this point so we you know that we should acknowledge the things we that we did to hurt ourselves and fix them and these issues by the way to me have nothing to with Democrats Republicans does it have to do with practical thoughtful policy that works now you said something I want to come back to for a minute which is about you said there were dignity and something you feel strongly about as we all do and the key thing that you and I have talked about the past is that dignity comes from work dignity comes from the purpose and meaning that come from being needed through a real job tell me what we need to do in this country to actually get more people into not into fake jobs not into make work jobs into real jobs in the real economy so they can support themselves in their family so I believe in healthy safety social net for the we needed an old poor disabled etc and our son but I also believe that a lot of it and we do is transfer payment so a lot of them that doesn't necessary and so a lot of the folks who would prefer to have a job your people the the common notions the job is bad most people have jobs like their jobs they've learned you know they've learned how to do things you know if that we diminish like the burger flippers well that's the person's start a job and they go to the second job if you go to most the fast-food places the assistant managers and the manager started that way and they're proud of what they did to themselves so I agree we got to get the kids job so how do you get jobs a healthy economy so focus on how you grow the economy you can always tax people differently but focus on the things that grow the economy and then skills so the skills take place at high school so there's a high school they're high schools all around which do this kids learn they go to high school but they also learn how to maintain a car they leave forty five thousand dollars a year and they're quite happy okay they could still go into college so whether with this high schools community colleges etc preparing kids for jobs and there are lots of jobs out there the nursing codine maintaining equipment logistics supply a custom customer service you know sales is a job you can learn how to be a good at sales or something like that and so we don't do a good job again Americans be one of the best of that plumbers electricians vocational schools community colleges and we've lost our way for and against a lot of bureaucratic reasons you know like a lot of people teach these schools it's all about college you know in college has its huge benefit but but like you know the unemployment rate is I think in Spain and Italy for men 20 to 30 or something like that it's like 15 to 20 percent okay and Switzerland is 2 percent mm-hmm because of Switzerland these kids go on to learn a skill with real paid apprenticeships that work for the businesses and work for the kids they can still going to college okay so something like 70% do that and 30% go to college is not that different you have the United States and they're just do a better job at getting people involved in the workforce and every time we get kids and we go to inner-city schools where there's problems called TFI we go to industry schools we do this with already men not women who were in trouble the kids who may not make it out they have problems with family that probably education and we started this program we give him a mentor apprenticeships training to get him into college and to get him through college and I've been to I've been to one of those graduations you know in the path of that usually a single parent buts is crying when the kids come to Princeton Harvard or one of those and and they have dignity they you know they you know they always tell you they didn't know like working it can be be fun they didn't know that like executives make jokes they thought it can be like a very militaristic thing to be really unpleasant all day long and it's not most people like going to work mmm it's like work is like the office in a comedic comedy show you know it's we do have a few yuxin yeah what one thing that a little bit of data that reinforces your point is that you know most people think that they enjoy their jobs but they assume that most other people don't like their jobs the but the truth is that eighty-nine percent of Americans alike or love their jobs and that does not depend on college attainment and it does not depend on income which means that it is sort of disrespectful to say that poor people's work is somehow a punishment and poor people's work is somehow a bunch of junk jobs the first rung in the ladder is still part of ladder is I think your basic point you also here's the best job training these young kids know the military yeah right they shave them they teach them teamwork show up in time or just as communications and there and when they get out of the military they're all proud and they know what to do they want to work as part of a team you know this does the second best job McDonald's same thing and they have that great commercial on TV now so if you hear me Steve I'm bragging on you but you know that great camera is saying the best first job I mean and it could be because it is that first wrong I like that shaving them part we're gonna start out that ie I I hired a barber the so okay so when we talk about the military or McDonald's and and you're talking a lot about skills you know you care you're passionate about as a matter of fact vocational technical education may be a national apprenticeship program wouldn't be fantastic their point is everybody needs more skills well they come out of high school but I think that we both agree that not everybody needs college yeah one of the biggest problems that we have is this college for all mentality notwithstanding the fact that it's fantastic so an amazing leg up for so many people but I know you and I talked about this in the past that too many people go to college because the field I have - as opposed to going to work and we have a society that rewards college that should be rewarding skills and experience so here's my question you have 250,000 employees what could you do to show the rest of the country that people can earn their success through hard work and personal responsibility and merit and skills training without going to college so here's a mistake I think we made and I think a lot of companies make because it's easy for us to do college degree required so it's like a screen and it makes sense that makes a lot of sense but a college degree is not required for a lot of things that you do in a call center of teller and when you start as a call center tell doesn't mean you can't go to college later it just means you have a choice and and there's this it may be true by the way that the kids go to college they become a teller we have high attrition because that's not what they aspired to do and then you've got the college kid the high school kid we did this program - in New York City my wife did it so if you're watching Judy thank you we trade these high school kids and they love these jobs and the jobs paid $35,000 with full medical and retirement you know and and which is worth $12,000 a year and so these kids feel great about it and of course we I expect them to go on through something else later in their life they have to do that but you know that someone might move up become bankers in the branch branch managers regional directors hell they may get to my job one day mmm-hmm great and so if you think of American companies made a commitment that was less toward using calls as a signal and more toward figuring out what skills people need we could actually create the demand signals that would go to the American education system and I think it was an accidental mistake that was made that should be fixed and a lot of companies are realizing this by the way and the BRT is done a whole study and work skills and issues and this is to come at many times the other issue by the way is we have 20 million stones in this country and and you know a lot of them deserve to have a second chance I'm not talking about violent you know offenders but a lot of the things that are written in the laws people would hire them hmm I can't get credit I can't get a job how do you get a second chance and so we have to do a better job giving you know these folks a chance and so we've you know and for a bank there will actually kind of regulations it's essentially said you can't hire felons and we've actually got them to change that and that we will now try of programs and certain jobs ex non vine felons maybe can get a job somewhere they're maybe not Willie Sutton but yeah but specifically not really so yeah that's they so it's it you bring up the the criminal justice system we were just talking about unnecessary ecology you you have given me a list in the past of this very interesting list that I think we want to share with the audience here you know people will talk about the ways to increase GDP the GDP stimulators the easy ones you have a list of negative GDP stimulators in other words the things that actually are lowering economic productivity and growth in this country so take through I'm going to tick through them and yeah and also like economists don't normally put these in models and most of these have gotten worse over time so therefore they you know they've been static the whole time they may not actually reduce the GDP we spent a lot of money in war like trillions okay which obviously has a huge effect on productivity negatively the uncompetitive tax system the bed education system the increasing inability to build infrastructure the increasing regulations was you know if don't think about big banks think about small businesses and bureaucracy and stuff like that that stops small business formation the opioid priors the felon crisis I'm sure I'm missing something I had a list of ten all are negative productivity factors and the reason the reason you start thinking about it is if I travel the country and you know all the business people here how many of you are getting the productivity of two percent almost every businesses and just started me thinking well how come is not higher and it may very well be because of bad policy and we need to fix these things and again they're not Democrat Republican and they need to be fixed in a lot of these cases business working with government civic society to come with solutions and execute something actually makes sense and you see it happening on a city level mayor Duggan in Detroit is doing it okay Mitch Landrieu in a New Orleans did it okay Rahm Emanuel in Chicago did it where they actually changing things at the ground working with business schools how they do the jobs to help make their might their economy work better so a lot of the experiments that happen the city and are working fallows who wrote that are great articles antic they were traveled around in went to small Midwestern companies and was kind of surprised to find out how many are thriving the opposite of what you thought and hit was anecdotal be much like fifty cities and he started to say why it was usually because the mayor only cared about how the city not necessary the next job the business people want to help the city the Civic people want to help the city and they came with ideas to help let's bring in this business let's clean up this park let's have a night program for the kids let's let's put some more money in the hospital let's do and it works and so that's I hope our government we start to collaborate little bit more like that and we'll have successful solutions for a lot of these problems look let me let me push back on one area because I want to get your thinking on this one of the things that it's always amazed me is the fact that when I contemplate the fact that the the greatest source of growth in Asia has been of course has been globalization and free trade China for example has pulled 600 million people out of starvation level poverty since 1980 extraordinary that has everything to do with with trade with the rest of the world a good deal of it with the United States why has that been facilitated because for the very first time the sea lanes in the Pacific have been free of war and the number one reason that these sea lanes have been free of pugilistic forces is because of the American blue water Navy in other words its American military force which is not a deadweight loss in this in this context on the contrary its stimulated growth beyond the wildest imaginations of American consumers but beyond that has pulled hundreds of millions of people at a starvation level poverty around the world so to what extent can we net out the the deadweight costs of conflict versus something like this you know the military is is an unbelievable institution if anyone served here thank you all right but you're absolutely correct you know PAC's Americana is much more appreciated around the world it is here an America did a lot of things for for not just economic reason but for moral reason it's still the one country that does things to help other people and it's not trying to steal their oil or their land or things like that so PAX America is important trade is important so trade and technology have lifted billions of out of poverty and well I think there are really legitimate complaints about trade particularly around China okay we shouldn't throw the bay out of the bath water here and and the American leadership is also really important to maintain you know a really healthy global economy so let's stay on shredder for a second your China bull right generally yes tell me about that you know China you gotta be I say this respectfully okay America has all the food water and energy needs very peaceful neighbors Canada Mexico we haven't had a worth either one since the mexican-american war in 1848 hey China does not have enough food war and energy its neighbors are really tough Russia Vietnam India Pakistan Afghanistan Korea Indonesia Philippines Japan who are quite worried about China by the way and so they and they still have 400 million people living in poverty they don't have our institutions they don't have a rule of law they have very high corruption levels that's why they have to elbows market reform but the leadership starting you know 30 years ago started to look at what the rest of the world was doing like Singapore in particular at this time and said well we could do that and lift up our people you know they they're the the so they had a long way to go as much easy to start your economy from to grow it to ten thousand from $60 a person the 10th out of GDP and so they're quite smart they want to lift up their people I should any leadership of any country that they were very thoughtful about it they've built institutions education they started reform markets reform like they they would die to have our market reform and the innovation and growth and local eruption and high transparence we have in this country it just can be a long time get there so this isn't like they're gonna win automatically they have to do a lot to get even close to having the prosperous economy we have here today now where we shoot ourselves in the foot sometimes and they're they since they can Mac will manage they can take decisions that are very hard to take a democracy and they have huge issues to overcome pouring out the democracy eliminating corruption clean and more efficient economy think of the state-owned enterprises I do think the better out the more likely outcomes of 30 years from now they will have 40 percent of the Fortune 1000 they already have 20 percent they're graduating I think five times or 10 times more stem students here than we do you know they're sending a couple thousand students around the year and paying for it bringing them back so they have a more educated population the odds are they'll do quite well and but the one didn't have serious bumps in the road it won't be like the last 20 years whether you know had 10 percent growth of any stumbles they may very lot of stumbles like the restaurants ahead so how would you manage our trade relationship with China today given all the things that you've just said and and and given the fact we have obviously there are some difficulties with it right now BRT has spoken to the administration and the president directly myself directly sometimes about the issues and you hear about them but this thing is much more detailed tariffs non-tariff barriers are just regulated or stopping things in law that you get the right to do it but there's no way you can get this thing shipped in and you know if the non-reciprocal investment ownership we can't buy a hundred percent of you know a broker dealer over there they could buy a hundred percent over dealer here that's true for a hundred industries by the way and then I think it's a little overblown so they don't enterprises and support so they have this industrial policy you know it's nothing really heavy industrial policy but the fear is they're using their money subsidies to the standard enterprise to dominate global industries that would be a problem so if that's true that will be a huge problem so our view is a huge issue the president raised it we would have done it differently so the method is different you know our view is you just have seriously you should have gotten Mexico Canada Japan Europe which they may be doing now Korea have a common view of how the world trade systems change a little bit and then go see Korea not nasty and not against them saying this is the standard which all up --have we should update WTO which update IP laws we should update state-owned enterprise laws etc some of which are not dealt with in the WTO okay so the predecessor rights a WTO is is antiquated it is so let's fix it but I think we thought it'd be better than tariffs and the fear of tariffs was always that it would be tit for tat which is very predictable and it just creates the chance that something goes south but you know I hope it works and the president said it worked in getting NAFTA done and god bless him we've wanted a NAFTA deal we wanted the deal to get done you know how you get it done and you know obviously the method might be different so but it seems like he's now gets trying to get the ducks in a row with the other partners before he goes to China which is what I would do and then be just very honest with China tell them what you want how you want it when you want it listen to what they have to say like in any negotiation and come up with something works for both parties so you're you are optimistic about the trade policy with China the way that it's going so far that you've seen I am optimistic I think the odds of a policy error are higher when nations start to get angry at each other so therefore you know the the indirect effect of confidence capital stuff like that could actually mount and we know reverse some of benefit we've seen from tax reform regulatory reform but but I don't know I mean it's just it's a different way to go about something and I hope he succeeds yeah and you also are more in favor of multilateral trade agreements as opposed to the bilateral approach the president's taking are you you could do either and make them good so I'm not for one or the other so obviously multi loud I can do a great deal with you but I'm by Lao but multilateral can do the same thing because you know you're giving away and you know what you're getting so whatever I give you and maybe give them the ten people but I'm getting I'm getting from ten people and since you so be slightly different deals there might be less complex than happy to do ten separate ones and we put them all together I'm not sure you're better off with worse off I'm gonna change a little bit we've been talking about policies in terms of any piece of geopolitical it wasn't just the trade policy it was America and its allies setting kind of how commerce should take place with standards that we walls all believe in around some of the rules I just talked about some humanity standards some pollution standards and so I think it would've been good and maybe one day they'll revisit it so how long you been CEO well I became CEO of Bank one in 2000 JPMorgan I wasn't see a CEO for 18 months so Oh since 2000 18 years - 18 months okay and you've had every year more employees and a more complex organization you've seen a lot in the policy environment you've seen a lot of disagreement let's give some advice from arguably America's most successful CEO to Washington DC which is not very which is not not getting along at the moment let's talk a little bit about how you have actually been able to find cooperation and consensus and a highly combat of environment which is the banking sector in a very large and complex organization what are some principles of leadership that washington needs to learn from corporate america I wish the old Washington's I think and think of those not kind words look my my view it look I run JPMorgan Chase and so we goes everybody all the time you know and I've never said well I don't like them I don't like this one policy to have we got to see them we see presidents and prime ministers and ministers of finance around the world and just try to have a conversation understand their point of view you know tell me if you think with the wrong or why sometimes every now and then they say something is really smart and you go back and check and there's a better way to do it so very all we try to be very open with everybody we have a lot of really good people involved in policy you gotta in a democracy that democracy is tough you know the politicians I know what my job is no politics by their nature have to compromise that is what a democracy is say okay I don't want to put that highway there but I'll put it there if you build the school I really need there's nothing wrong with that there is no other way that is what a democracy is you got it and that's what they try to do in Congress I think when they become very partisan it stops good policy I don't care that the partisan I care that we're not getting the good positive sure it's the average American and it hurts the average American much more than hurts me and so you know to me it's like we should find common ground I think people should have dinner together I think they should you know I even in my company I tell you know go take people out to lunch that you're not comfortable with someone have a different color you know and some of it and so find out what it is they believe and you know have those conversations to do the best you can don't get angry you know what most people have their own they are in I think are in the interest of what they want the United States of America nothing happens our collaboration almost nothing and the the bad part is you often see when the government does something which 100% partisan you subject the country to 20 years of war okay that was Obamacare 10 years of war you know other policies it really if you can't do certain things bipartisan you shouldn't do them at all and wait for a better time and so I want universal health care for Americans I think there are ways to get it and to do it that makes sense on my list twenty percent of our GDP and health care okay the rest of the developing world is around ten percent and that is a huge problem and it's going to it's gonna break our budget in 10 or 20 years it's gonna and and so to me that's another negative productivity when all nobody is good if you live longer you know medicine help me of course is better but a lot of it isn't better outcomes it's fraud it's waste it's waste of end-of-life it's it's we don't do wellness programs obesity is driving cancer stroke heart disease depression and we got to fix these things and so I put that in my negative productivity list too it's great thing you know gave me an AI because you know one of the things here is that all conversations wind up being about policy I mean I could start a conversation about the dental plan at ATI that we'd wind up talking about dental policy which is a fantastic thing and you notice that every question I ask keeps coming back to policy you're a national policy guy yeah yeah after this you should be a scholar day yeah so okay now there's polarization in Washington you already dealt with that but this polarization around the country one in six Americans have stopped talking to a close friend or family member over politics 40% of both Democrats and Republicans say that they would be deeply unhappy if their child married a member of the other party and as recently as 1980 that was about 6% or did you get these numbers hey I'm all numbers man so that's a and so okay so now let's just say that that's absurd absolutely it's what an alternative the universe your president United States what would you do to turn down the temperature on our political disagreements and bring America to the harmony that we need to make the new American Century someone told me that President Obama had never had Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell over for lunch or dinner I would have him every week that's it every week and I wouldn't make it personal and yes they're not going to agree in a whole bunch of things they don't like each other's choices and stuff like that and and I don't know what the and you guys are better at this and I am but gerrymandering maybe we should have open primaries I was never a favorite term lose I've kind of changed my mind Attorney General should not be allowed to run for governor for four years after office because they used that job for personal professional purposes and so I think there are fixes that we need to have to do and maybe it's in financing of parties and disclosures of parties and I we wouldn't have to do something because this really doesn't work you know I've had two more questions for you that I'm going to turn over to the audience and that my my penultimate question is about what you've learned over the past ten years it was it was a tricky time in 2000 in your industry and and and you you you personally had to do a lot of things as a CEO that you probably didn't envision when you when you started at your career what have you learned over the past ten years and how has it changed you as a leader I'm not I'm not sure I've learned that much you know a lot a lot of the lessons are like you know that's bad no no lately markets just shifted what he said no I'm saying that there certainly I'd say I might advise my Chairman's like certain lessons they weren't learned there re learned like you've put them over and over it's like if you learn a box you hold up your hands yeah well you learn when you get in the ring and the guy punches it face 15 times their own row and then you hold up your hands and and so so diligence hardwork morality do the right thing those well I always believe in them you know and but I haven't I haven't changed as a person I probably been much more time on policy teaching strategy than I did you know just the detail nuts and bolts of systems up you know competitors and stuff like that most leagues have a great management team and I don't have to do some of those things anymore so uh so when you started your career you're doing more on changing management systems and now you're thinking more at the meta level about the policies that affect your industry we're growing and we're doing a whole bunch of stuff we have new products have served open our first branch in the chase you know May I went to see Mayor Doug it may have Duggan's the guy you know who grew up the we need venture capital for entrepreneurs of color they can't get they don't have normal bank financing and they don't have the same fallback capital they get from family and it was a great idea we worked on it we came up with one we start with a four million dollar fund is now a twenty million dollar fund we're now doing it not just in Detroit but in Chicago New Orleans in New York and you know if this really works well it's lifting up a lot of people why not a billion dollars and of course when you travel around and listen you get ideas for everybody who thought of Mayor was going to teach us about financing small business but he did and so you know about Steve cases sure worries yeah yeah yeah he finds out that Steve Case our friend who he's been at you have many times that 75% of venture capital goes to three states California New York and Massachusetts and and about two percent one and a half percent goes to Pennsylvania well Pennsylvania's got these two huge cities and lots of towns in between a melon with all dar but and this is a he but this is not a tragedy this is an opportunity and this is something that you've emphasized and I'm for when I've interviewed you or when we've spoken in the past that in in the key things it seems to meet a leadership lesson from Jamie Dimon is look at all of the bad things that are going on that's your opportunity set yeah is that right also policy yeah now we're coming in as a microcosm we're coming to DC so it's not just we're here in investment banking or a bank the government's we're here in commercial banking or even private banking the regulators for somebody didn't want to open retail branches but we've opened these retail branches it would serve i think there'd be fifty up to seventy you're talking about took about five hundred jobs directly another thousand indirectly but in the in those branches small business lending entrepreneurs we're going to put some of the branches in Ward 6 and 7 7 & 8 so we're gonna try some special financial education so those branches we're gonna do small business lending affordable housing lending but do more philanthropy because we're here on the ground now and yeah you helped lift up a community if we do a good job you can help lift up Washington DC mm-hmm last question before we turn over to the audience so get your questions ready so you've seen a lot in the last 18 years CEO and in a long career even before that every executive has every leader has made mistakes and has learned from those mistakes tell me the biggest mistake that you think that you've made as a leader and what you learn from it which I makes I've made so many that's amazing okay and if I write a book one of the books I should write which would be my biggest mistakes it'll be a long volume and but you learn so I'm gonna tell you the nature of the mistakes made and the mistakes any decision made at anger is wrong yeah don't get angry I don't yell live stuff like that but if you get that welling up inside of you and you say I'm not doing that you're probably making a mistake any decision made on a Friday when you're tired is wrong any decision the the eggs Fridays off now yeah but the biggest mistake is I don't you don't have the right people in the room the chance of making a mistake you know I don't sit then I guess sometimes I get we get relaxed might be able to work the issue we work at work at work it and you're much more likely to make a better outcome you get the right people in the room and work it these there are solutions work it work in a second time work with a third time so and obviously the biggest mistake of all is when you have wrong people and when you didn't thoroughly vet the person or you gave them responsibility they were entitled to that hurts you your company more than anything else and that's a multi-year setback it takes it takes a while to figure out who they are I always tell people pretty good at bullshitting you know it some of them practice for 25 years you know and and but you get a pretty good radar for it but and then if there they are and then you know it takes a while before people tell you Jamie this this is not working and that's made could be another year and it takes another happy to find someone that's two and a half years of damage done lost time and so you know the biggest one is be thorough on how you people and I learned and I maybe to know each other longer don't necessarily promote people that you wouldn't work for if you wouldn't have your kid work for the person or if you wouldn't want to work for the person yourself why are you giving the bigger job and yet there's this huge temptation under the best salesmen that are best this they've been patting their chests or quote they deserve it they've been there long enough they deserve and that's a terrible thing because very often it's not true so you have to be very thorough on job promotions hiring stuff like that so people are everything obviously in banking people are everything but people are everything every place in life people are everything because relationships are what matter the mostly the ultimate the ultimate resource what's the bigger mistake is that hiring the wrong people or not or not parting ways quickly enough when you realize somebody is the wrong person oh when you make one you tend to at least the other and being blind you know we interview people now we have a lot of people interview them know sometimes I mean I may be good at what I do buy may not be the best interviewers I'm I really like you I love talking to you instead of saying can you do the job ya know some of these jobs are big tough job front to back it's like running a big machine and you think the person might be good at it they're not but they're gonna be good at is empathy jobs you know as sales or covering people or policy jobs and research there's nothing wrong with that but you make mistakes like that and it's hard but over time you get much better I mean we have exceptional people I'm when I travel the world and we have seen your country offices in six or 50 countries we've got investment bankers who are respected by the clients we've got retail banks if I go in and the client says tell me how great the branch manager is our branch has served doggie bones two dogs you know people go just to get the doggy bone for their dog and someone said Jim you could save money baby we're the doggie boys and when I get rid of doggie bones the dogs likes them therefore their orders like them and you know people people visit the branch just sometimes for companionship and so you know but inside the company every branch manager every receptionist every banker know the better they are the better is for everybody and part is to have the honesty cleaning it up people tell each other the truth so you don't have this you know a lot of companies they have politics the enemy is the person next to you not the competitor so this is an important thing to having the energy doing the right stuff as opposed the energy doing their own stuff I'm gonna turn it over to our friends here obviously I heard go for the rest of the time but that would be the wrong thing to do we've got mics and we'll come out and we've got first hand I saw it was right here in the center aisle we got right one right behind you sir you can stand up and tell us who you are and we can you know I Luke or do with accordion associates and I appreciate your comment earlier that not everyone needs a college degree but I suspect that your mid and upper level managers do have degrees so the question is do you have a company program that helps them your employees get a better education while they're working for you yeah we have we have tuition assistance and programs like that we also spend I forgot the number but a billion dollars you're trained our own people so you know you look at these big institutions we bring in 40,000 people a year we train 40,000 people a year we probably chain another 40,000 to move up to another job we send them back to school we give them medical benefits I took we give them Pilates and massages that makes them happy you know we do all these things and we pay them well are you our lowest starting wages of generally 16 dollars and so these and I'm not just be for my company we do why are you doing the massages by the way I know you personally I've always said that your I always said that as a joke and I walked into our headquarters the other day it was Employee Appreciation Week and there were like 50 people giving massages to our employees and maybe they might have done that stuff to make me I'm not a liar but I mean I'm saying we want to take care of our people we move around the world we take care of their families they give full benefits to them and so we go out of our way and tuition assistance is one of them here the back yes ma'am good afternoon I'm Karen Alston I'm an entrepreneur I own two businesses and I'm gonna ask the question but first I have to say that you need to add JP Morgan to that list because I came straight out of undergrad to work for JP Morgan on Wall Street and end up in private client it was the best training I've ever received and it helped me with my career going forward thank you and tonight I'm attending a black female founders dinner that JP Morgan is hosting here Tracy so here I wasn't doing so I would have gone to that guy look what those things are so much fun and you learn a lot I'm so excited for it thank you thank you for doing that so we're ten years out of the financial crisis and I wanted to get your feedback on that but more importantly we're at a place where more hedge funds are owning our traditional corporations and I wanted to hear your thoughts on the hedge fund industry buying more traditional corporations and what that means for the American worker so put this on your list and negative productivity is is the things that are going on in corporate governance I believe in good corporate governance transparency openness active boards and stuff like that but we've gone from 8,000 public companies to 4,000 public companies and I'm gonna put on the list of why that is and again people study this and I don't know exactly capricious and arbitrary litigation being in the public eye means you're constantly being attacked by various entities and and stuff like that frivolous shareholder meeting so we have look I love my shareholders I speak to them in various forms all the time but the show the meeting has become a farce that's what it is we all know that and and you know social groups take I'm not against social groups but you know they get hijacked by that so a lot of people are going don't want to go public and then obviously regulations and all those things they've changed some of those things so I think having public companies is a good thing now in some cases okay private businesses you can get money longer I think hedge funds and private equity are like other businesses some are good some are bad there's a bit in the marketplace for companies they've their doctors they fix them no different and we try to do so it could be good or bad so I talk for me to say that but I think it's bad that were driving them private and I think we should look at these things and particularly litigation and our litigation stuff you know is probably the most expensive one in the world and it's arbitrary its capricious it's a crapshoot so that's why people settle so much because you can lose and not win all right I mean that's pretty simple like if you could only lose and you can't win maybe you should pay a few bucks to get out of it we select okay why do you sell that lawsuit so on the financial crisis itself so I should make clear you know the regulates did a lot of good things okay Lehman Brothers would not happen today Lehman would have had two and a half times as much equity three times as much liquidity two times as much long-term debt the regulator's have the legal authority to take it over now which they did not have in 2008 and they have the knowledge to manage it think of an orderly management of a bankrupt company as opposed to at your fire everybody and for a financial company you want an orderly liquidation over time cause they're not dumping assets in the marketplace that's all been fixed and even if it went bankrupt which wouldn't happen that the second of bankruptcy all that debt would become equity so like 120 billion dollars that would be come back with your beacon the most over equities France company in the world all the derivative contracts are stay in place they should take a victory lap and so though and those were important to do and I think someone's now of course some of it was overdone and it needs to be recalibrated but and they're things which I think damage like one of the ones and you could put this on the negative productivity list I should be lengthen this less a little bit mortgages the there are 3,000 to send you a bill and you know there are 3,000 requirements now and different in 50 states we should have national laws and because of that it's really expensive servers in mortgage who pays for that the customer ultimately and then also origination requirements the same thing anyone that kind of mortgage recently it's torture you know and and who pays for that and because the cost is higher what happens to mortgage availability it drops and then because of litigation stuff a lot of the big company the bank's pretty much got out of some things so who got less more availability a young immigrant self employed prior default the mortgages between 200,000 and 300,000 and you see it dead in all the numbers and that one thing alone are Aconitum ated that you could have had you know three or four hundred million more mortgage a year to last five years that's a trillion five net new mortgages that's a lot of homes and some that have been new homes and so you know we did that to ourselves and we should say I don't know what this change of tomorrow now the government is aware of this and you know the wheels of regulate regulations are moving baby fixed that would be good for America and it does not add any risk the people who owned that insured etc it will be fine our friend Peter Wallison stepped out right before the sands oh yeah he knows it's better than any well he's yet no he really he he knows it well and and I think he agrees with every work who's next next hand up yes sir playful tone up in the front row hey clay fuller I'm a Jean Kirkpatrick fellow and foreign and defense policy studies here at at AI with increasing money laundering scandals going on around the world I'm wondering if you have a comment on the use of anonymous shell companies and beneficial ownership reg registries and how that works and as it applies a higher compliance cost to banks and specifically whether that should be shared that cost should be shared more with the lawyers the Realtors and the other accountants that set up some of these money-laundering avenues for sanctions individuals another thing we can fix this okay so the cost is enormous and then we torture the clients kyc files documents every subsidiary the officers the rights and it goes through you know every time you swipe that card every time we move money it goes from 50 70 hundred maybe a thousand algorithms makes her safe and we do this with with with companies and who are they and there's a money laundering and did the small business grow too fast is it too much cash how come they did this and and so if you have a hair keeping shop and you went from 800,000 to a million six of additional revenues and was all as extra cash that would trigger stuff okay so and anything gets triggered that histories things we report to the government is called czars I'd rather stands for it but it's basically we have a suspicious activity report they get to or thousand-year from us and probably 2 million a year from everybody but the banks can't share it with each other I don't know why not like the government I'll share it the laws are written in such a way that we create huge bureaucracy around it so I think you can actually this is great oh you can capture more bad guys and reduce the cost in the system and by some countries in the United States one of the biggest things in you mentions kyc all these shell companies in some countries when you file a corporation you have to state the ownership period you're done with that one major issue here you know you have to invest company after company after company and god forbid you make a mistake the penalties so obviously all the banks want to do this really well we don't want to help terrorists and money launderers and every now and then someone's gonna slip through the system but there are better ways to do it again the government is working in this and but it's just another one of those things we just don't get right another thing on the list all right right here ma'am and then we'll uh Mike's coming to you thanks thank you for all the comments we're back our bagasse from a head of global public policy for Comcast NBC one of the issues that's but deviling all of us is issues of security and privacy that are you know just in the pages every day if you were king for the day and could do something that would actually get executed what would you do to address those it's a huge problem not news biggest cyber I mean we we are we are we spent several million dollars in cyber we're very protected but our country is not and again the government knows this but they got to move faster privacy is a huge deal and so it's very simple in this one to say what the principle should be the principal and the in Europe did this goes GPD our laws that the customer should know what information have in them and that they should have the right effectively to delete it and those principles sound great but in reality the execution of policy but it'd be really carefully right that because it's really hard to show these people have 400,000 data points on you how do you even show it to a customer if you say delete so I had to be any you could disk I may delete if I gave it to Jackie already and who gave it to so-and-so now you couldn't build technology that if I delete it delete it and Jackie's can at least on his computer so all these things to be done it's got to be really really careful so the fundamental principle be easy I think the American public when they find out the truth is will be outraged I don't think when people say that they don't care I don't think they know and I think you know usually the young kids the Millennials and stuff they don't pay attention this kind of stuff until later in life you know and then they're gonna pay more attention to it I'll just make a side note Millennials because I hear they're depressed you know they're not gonna get ahead as much as we all get ahead the GDP of America even would grow slow okay he's gonna double in the next 30 years out a bridge household average GP or person 65,000 3,000 when all of our great-grandparents came to this nation where do they inherit nothing what's this generation can inherit a nation worth 150 trillion dollars today is theirs for the giving could we all be gone the millennia don't still be complaining so but there are there are requirements so like you you can say that if you were advertising truth in advertising you know so you guys have to follow to it and advertising a lot of their social media doesn't you could say you have to for JP Morgan I do business to you I have to verify you so some of these people posted some noxious stuff why don't we have required that be verified so you can go on Twitter or Facebook now and you're gonna probably get tons of Jamie diamonds I'm not on Facebook or Twitter you know and God knows what they're saying so I think there are and I if I was the folks and I'm a little sympathetic to the folks of Silicon Valley but if I was them I was realized I have a real problem and they are in inning two and and this any and the other thing which I've learned in my long life when problems start okay that letter is a letter to every AG of every state to the DOJ to the SEC to the FCC to all the foreign regulators so in when it starts man it just it should all come at the same time but okay who's next yeah right here on the edge hi I'm a reporter for S&P global market intelligence um I don't blame you that could mean anything right so I want to ask you is the era of too-big-to-fail over now that you said that that our system financial system is safer regulators have done their job what are your thoughts well firstly you're gonna have a recession one day you're gonna have a crisis one day it'll be different than last crisis and I'm not saying cuz I want it if by too big to fail and you have to define that cuz most people don't know what that means but if by too big to fail means that if you fail the Gummer's got to bail you out then yeah we were mostly done and then they can't unwind you because big comes will fail can they do it in a way that doesn't hurt you and that the taxpayers not gonna pay that's been done all of the money that's been paid out of the FDIC was funded by the banks JP Morgan alone has put ten billion dollars the FDIC to pay for failure of small banks okay so the the way was set up which is the right way by the way if there's a failure and and the FDIC has pay any money they will charge it back to the Romanian banks so I think it's mostly over but you should always be on the lookout for things that can cause problems in the system things that you know that governments good only governments can do you know business can't do it's a cyber might be one of them and not just for us it could be cyber for multiple industries out there so uh yeah it's over and the issue now you know you don't see the big banks total meth or not dodd-frank and reversing anything there were 2000 rules a lot of these rules have calibrations and all with all this needs to done is coordinate and calibrate in the way that makes sense for the economy that's all not to make banks so they can fill again we have time for one more question and then I'm gonna send you all back to make a living here in the back hi Jeff Seabrook you with Walmart's public policy team here in DC proud Chicago and I remember taking checks my dad's business would have to first Chicago then bank one and then two you know the bank today can you tell us a little bit about you know when people think about banking they're thinking about New York they're thinking about the financial centers around the world is inherently a global kind of element but in that time than when you came back to Chicago and Bank wanted some of the perspectives and lessons you've learned there and kind of how that kind of created the bank today but you know basically we're one of the things about banks I think it's sometimes a complicated thing unlike Walmart when someone walks into Walmart and have money you saw them a good banks have a other job to do which is proper allocation of capital half the time people ask for some we say no that kind of pisses people off it could be a credit card even we make a loan to a company you know covenants it's kind of like okay you know you have to sell your Ferrari no we we discipline but you need discipline capital undisciplined capitals would caused the crisis undisciplined capital like countries don't grow and the capital markets in general discipline so don't think it is the bank the capital markets investors hedge funds activists it's all part of a discipline to get capital properly allocated but my job is the same as yours and I think you guys are exceptional company which is to serve this to make clients happy on every interaction so the people think banks are mystical but they're not and they're consumer we take your money and then you could spend it with a credit card debit card check card we give you alerts we do online bill pay we just rolled out if you're a good customer free trading of stocks and bonds all right to hear that free I mean and and so we want to enhance that experience all the time so we're always in the incident know for the corporations we make loans we move money we raise equity of debt and the one that scares the hell people it really shouldn't is interest rate you know it's derivatives but 85% are interest rates and FX having people like you manage your business all the time I think our average revenue in FX trade is $75 we just do a lot of them and we try to manage the risk and stuff like that so our job is to serve the client and manage the risk most or risk eight when they took a risk taken America it sounds like yeah whoo let's go for this if you walked into my office and said we're gonna we think rates going up rates going down this document gonna be done I don't care that's not a business okay it's what a business is serving you and then managing the residual exposure so we might do a huge loan for you in five countries and then we quickly syndicated so we can reduce our risk and broaden it out and stuff like that but the end of the day the job is serve a client so I will the country and you know their clients we their countries we held up in the crisis so go back to too big to fail you should ask Canada what we did to help them with the housing crisis and you should ask a lot of clients I got a note from a little company of the day reminding me that I told the guy call whenever you have a big problem he called me late in oh eight and all his banks were billing and we made the whole loan okay and you can ask tons of companies that we tried to do the right things and to be there importantly in through thick or thin and the best thing you need to be there in bad times because you guys need us in bare times you know good times you barely need us a basis point but when the things get tough you know your banks got to be there and banks didn't change the price but just keep this in mind so banks world goes the healthy ones the only healthy ones couldn't rolled over trillions of dollars of loans trillions in Oh 8 and oh nine we rolled over ourselves a trillion to middle-market small business large corporations at the ongoing price like LIBOR plus 125 or even your bonds were probably training the marketplace at LIBOR plus 500 if you could sell them but you would have considered that rapacious if we did that and so we don't do that we just wanted to try to keep people alive so it's basically the same job you move money invest money hold money lend money get your money and we try to do it well we we move six trillion dollars around the world every day and we try to do it and we do it very safely very effectively and very low cost don't let the Silicon Valley so my friends and you in the past hour you've had common sense policy lessons lessons on positive ethical leadership and a whole lot of entertainment jamie dimon thank you always a pleasure thank you very much [Applause]
