FULL: CEO of JPMorgan Jamie Dimon’s Powerful Message on America’s Future and AI Threats | AQ1B

For the following interview, George Gonzalez, Vice Chairman and CEO of City National Bank of Florida, takes the stage of America Business Forum. Thank God. All right. So, Jamie, before we get started, I just want to take a second and thank everybody for being here this morning. I wasn't here yesterday, but I saw a bunch of video clips. And yesterday's program was outstanding. The lineup of speakers, including President Trump, really reflects the stature of this event, but more importantly, it reflects the stature of the city of Miami and the influence that we are generating both nationally and globally. Jamie, I'm sure you've been to a lot of conferences, I've been to a lot of conferences, and I've never seen the lineup of speakers that we've had yesterday and what we're going to have today. And a quick story, quick story. Mayor Francis called me up about two months ago and said, George, I am thinking about doing this event, here are my speakers, and we're going to make this happen. I said, Francis, you're crazy. You got two months to pull this together. Look at the speakers. You have the president, you have Jamie Dimon, you have a whole list of very influential people, you're never going to make this happen. But if you want to do it, let's try. And here we are. So, Francis, you're a little nuts. But congratulations on a heck of an accomplishment. So with that, I want to take a second and one more time welcome one of the most respected voices in global finance, one of the most influential bankers of our generation, Jamie Dimon. George, thank you. So thrilled to be here. Thank you. So, Jamie, my guess is a lot of people have heard a lot about your professional accomplishments, your career, and your impact to banking. But let's start with something a little bit more personal. And let's talk about how did your childhood and how did your family influence who you are as a person and who you are as a leader? First of all, thrilled to be here. A little embarrassing, this whole entry, but it's quite a production. You know, I grew up, my grandparents were all Greek immigrants who came from Greece, never finished high school. Moved to Jackson, Queens, not far from where President Trump grew up with a slightly smaller apartment than he had, a rental. But there were values that your parents taught. You didn't even know was happy at the time, which is, I'd say very fundamentally, it came from my grandparents, my parents, have a purpose in life. That purpose could be banking or art or science or being a political leader. It could be a caregiver. Treat everyone with respect. Everyone, like everyone equally and everyone fairly and everyone properly. Do the best you can. You know, whatever you're going to do, do the best you absolutely can and hopefully make the world a better place while you're doing whatever you do. And those are kind of just values that's embedded in me, and I still believe them, and they're important for my family. And I think they're important for a lot of folks I talk about, you know, when you talk about what actually were their purpose. At what point in your life did you feel like you knew what your purpose was and your passion were going to be or needed to be or you wanted to be? I didn't really. I guess it was in college, and, you know, I was always interested in business. I always read a lot. I always was interested in going out. My dad became a stockbroker, so I knew about financial services, but at one point, what I really wanted to do was help build a great company, you know, be part of the team building a great company. I didn't know what I would be doing, but I knew that being part of a team, and anyone, you know, I listened to Eric Schmidt, when you're on a team, and it's no different than team sports. You know, you want the team to win, and that was kind of a driving thing. To me, financial services was fascinating because when you wake up in the morning and read a newspaper, almost everything in that paper is going to affect you. All around the world, stocks, markets, you know, politics, so it's just a, I always found it a very fascinating field. I'm going to skip around a little bit, but you just mentioned something that I struggle with every day, and I'm sure a lot of people here do as well. In today's environment where there's so much information coming at you, so much media, so many moving, fluid perspectives, where do you find the most accurate information that allows you to make decisions and to really set strategy for your organization? Yeah, well, there are really two ways. I mean, I get up really early, I read five papers, I read everything people send me. I just, I'm constantly reading all the time, surveying the landscape of competitors, countries, and stuff like that. The second way is really just kind of get on the road and get out with your management team, get in a bus and go to a branch and, you know, talk to a lot of people because a lot of very smart people out there, and you know, the best ideas don't even come from America. They come from, you know, places you don't expect it, and you run into technologies and you learn things. I remember years ago I sent the consumer banking team, 15 years ago, to China, and they were like, why are we going to China? We're an American U.S. consumer bank, and I said, you'll find out when you go get there, and I had to meet with Ping An and Tencent and WeChat and Alibaba, and it opens up your eyes. So just get out. I mean, I can go to a branch, we can go, you and I can go to a branch together today and sit down and talk to the tellers and we will learn something. Something stupid that we do or something that doesn't work or something that they did better at another bank where they worked before or something like that. So just constantly talking to people, constantly surveying the landscape. I heard Eric use the word curiosity, constant curiosity. You know, once your mind closes, you're not going to be able to make a lot of progress in a lot of things. Not only do you learn something, but you probably get the real story of what's really happening, that by the time things get to you from a leadership standpoint, it's been filtered so many times, but when you're hearing it firsthand, it makes a huge difference. Yeah, I don't allow people to filter stuff. I still read customer complaints and I always tell people, if they ask you a question, you got to respond to me directly and not go up that chain of command. Because that chain of command starts to edit it and fine tune it and you got to, you know, if you're in a position like mine, you just got to break down those barriers all the time. The bureaucracy doesn't want to control you, so you got to like kill the bureaucracy. That's part of my job, you know. So let's go back to your personal life. I think we all understand and believe that challenges are also silver linings in life. So as you think about your career, your personal life, what's been some of your hardest lessons and what did you learn from them? You know, I mean, in the personal life, we've all been through, you know, some forms of personal hardships. Lessons from those hardships, I mean, if you're talking about the mistakes you made, like the things you did personally, you know, that's a great quote, you don't learn a lot from the second kick in the mule. I mean, again, I heard the mayor and Eric talking about it, you know, we've all made a tremendous amount of mistakes. And I always say there's a pattern to them sometimes, like when you act in anger, well, that is almost always a mistake. It was almost like when I was a young executive, someone gave me a business card that said, you know, all I had to do was fill out the date. My name is Jamie Dimon, I'd like to apologize for my behavior on the night of X, because I would lose my temper or something. So you're constantly learning about that, too, and it's better to learn from other people's mistakes than making them yourself. And you could do that, too. So Jamie, the institution that I'm privileged to lead is $30 billion, one or two states, 1,300 employees. You're leading a $4.5 trillion institution, 60 countries, 48 states, 300,000 employees. All right? We're almost the same. It's pretty much equal playing grounds between Jamie and I. Another 120 years or so, I'll be on that side of the room. But when you think about the importance of culture, you know, we believe culture is the backbone of strategy. But when you think about the importance of culture, how do you implement culture when you have an organization that's all about managing risk and it's of that size? Well, first, I've been there for quite a while, so it's a little bit different. But you better be relentless. I mean, and again, I'm going to go back to the team example. You know, if you have a team of people, everyone does their homework, everyone does their sprints, everyone learns the plays. And if you're the coach or the boss or, you know, whatever, you better be relentless. And we're pretty relentless on that. And it's not because you say we treat employees properly. They see you do it. They see you have bad people. You ask them to leave. You know, I remember the first time I have fired clients because they mistreat our employees. That goes through the whole organization that these people mean what they say, they say what they mean. Getting on the road, you know, a lot of people say, you know, we're going to take care of the customer. But you go to a lot of corporations, they all stay at the corporate headquarters and talk to each other. They're not going on a sales call. You know, they're not going to sweat the issue with why the client may not be happy with you or something like that. So you just got to have to do it day in, day out, seven days a week, kind of relentlessly. When you go through business reviews, you're going through the detail. How long does it take to do this? How long does it take to do that? And then people get it over time and it kind of filters through the company. And then you've got to communicate. I undervalued communication earlier in my life. But if you can communicate it properly and clearly, it really matters. And it can't be corporate pablum. It's got to be words people actually understand. So you know, when stuff that comes out of my office is written by me, there's no corporate bullshit in it. I can't stand it. I won't allow it. But of course, people write it for me and they think I'm going to send it out. I will not. You know, and people know when you're speaking to them. So you know, as I'm scrolling through Instagram, I consistently run across Jamie Dimon quotes. It's, you're legendary. So one of the quotes that I've just, that just I thought about was the worst thing a company can have is a bunch of yes men. How do you ensure that people are telling you the truth? How do you filter out the BS from the truth? And particularly when you're Jamie Dimon, because people want to please you. How do you filter this out? Yeah. So if it literally, if people try to please me, it pisses me off. That is not the goal of an organization. Even when people say they want to be loyal to me, that gets me a little upset too, because they say, don't be loyal to me. Be loyal to the principles for which we stand. Be loyal to the company, their clients. That's not a personal type of thing. I was at a thing like this years ago and a woman was giving a great speech and she said, someone, you have to have one truth teller at the table. And she was walking out and I came up next and I said, can I just stop you for one second? If you've got 10 people around the table and there's only one truth teller, you have a problem, you know, and you weed them out, you know, that you know, when people are honest and forthright, they raise the hand and they say that is not accurate. And you better have that because if you don't have that, you will be going off base very quickly. And so you have a kind of a BS meter about how people are. And also, like you said, when you travel people, I mean, one of the favorite things I do, you know, I call it the breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I'm at the bar with you guys, you know, and when I'm at the bar hanging out with a bunch of people in the company around the world, they'll tell you. When they trust you, they'll tell you, you know, Jamie, you really got to look at this, you know, you don't understand what's happening and, you know, and then they also know you'll respond. You know, it doesn't make them right, but they know that I heard it and now it's my job maybe to do something about it. And over time, they see you do the right thing and they know that you mean what you say. And then everyone who works here does the same thing. So, you know, you don't have to necessarily come to me because there are a lot of people who say, you know, this is the right way to do something and we simply do it. So basically what you're saying is leading by example is a key element of making sure that the people that you're trying to instill certain beliefs in, they're watching you basically emulate those behaviors. Yeah. And you can't have friends of Jamie. Right. That your door is open to everybody. I don't know if Eric said this morning, but, you know, when you're in a room with a bunch of people, you know, you got to reach out to the person who's not speaking up. You know, you got to reach out, you know, there are shy people in the room. They may be men or women or black or white or LGBT, but it's our job to reach out to them and to have, you know, enough empathy to see that they want to say something, but they're a little embarrassed or it's harder for them to do it. And, you know, and so very often I'll talk to someone after a meeting and ask them that. And then you got to get rid of the bad. There are these really, really bad traits that get built up. And I'm sure you've all seen these. It's the meeting after the meeting. Well, I didn't want to say it to everybody in front of everybody, but, and they're trying to get you to change the decision the group had made. It's the rope-a-dope, you know, where the information wasn't shared beforehand. You know, it's all these little tricks that the politicians, the BSers do to try to capture it. I don't have meetings after a meeting. You know, I tell people, if you can't say it in front of your partners, don't say it at all. You know, you get paid a lot of money to do the right thing. And so, and again, I'll go back to a team example, you know, in corporations, you do a lot of BS, but you can't do it on a football field. You know, that person, they learned their player, they didn't learn their player, their coach will take them out. You know, Bernard Field is very easy to, you know, let people, they're nice people, they're a friend of mine. So the discipline on the sports team, that's what you want inside a company too. So Jamie, you've highlighted the value of learning from your competitors and also the value of learning from other institutions outside of your industry. And when you think about what are some of the insights that you've been able to draw from companies or leaders outside of the financial services industry? Yeah. So when I say I travel and see people, I always go see other companies. You know, I've been to Google and Dell Computer and WeChat and Alibaba. I mean, it's amazing to learn. So you have to do it outside of your own industry. I always love to ask people, how do you run your joint? What do you do? How do you meet? When do you meet? Who has the follow-up list? How do you run your office? How do you deal with customer complaints? And so you're always learning from that too. And there are always new tricks. And they're always, you know, if you look at, you know, people write analyst reports or people write for newspapers and magazines, there's always someone who just did something different or better. And I even remember when I was a younger executive, there was another guy there called Bob Lipp who's a very good friend of mine. I was watching him run a meeting. He was fabulous in running the meeting. He made it fun, but it was no BS about it. And he used to always use a quote, you know, celebrate your successes, but in the management meeting, emphasize the negatives. And you know, and he would always take you on the road and always take you to branches. And he would show you how to make it a, well, you didn't go to a branch just to show the flag. You went to a branch to, you know, he'd sit down with, you know, we'd have lunch with the tellers in the back or something like that and learn from them. And you learn from other people all the time. I still learn tricks of the trade always. Jamie, we have a quick video, but before we kick off the video, you've been an unbelievably influential role model in the world of finance, business, even public policy and geopolitics. And during the financial crisis, you were known to be the face of stability. So when everybody else was running for cover, you're a cool common collective. So let's show a quick video and then we're going to get back to a question for you. In 2008, the world's financial system was on the brink. Markets collapsed, giants fell, fears spread faster than reason. Well, that's not what we've been taught in finance. But in the eye of the storm, one leader stood steady. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, guided his team with discipline, foresight, and conviction. Doing a better job educating Americans about the power of our liberty, our freedoms. While others chased risk, he built resilience. Through decisions that would define a generation, JPMorgan emerged not broken, but stronger. A fortress of stability in a world of uncertainty. A masterclass in leadership under pressure. A story of foresight, courage, and the power of principle. So, you know, there's crisis and then there's crisis. When everything around you seems to be unstable and on fire, and the system seems to be on fragile ground, what is, what's the requirement of leadership, and what does that really feel like in that moment? Yeah. You know, it's like, I mean, first of all, you're kind of prepared beforehand, so you have people and risks, and I tell people what really changed wasn't much we did is that our risk committee used to meet once a week, it was meeting five times a day, including midnight or 5 a.m. in the morning to capture what was going on in Asia, and you got rid of all formality. You have a problem, you bring it up. You need people who are experts in this client, this credit, this legal system, and isolate or something like that. They're in the room, and you just move. It actually is kind of calming because you simply, you just roll up your sleeves, you start working 15 or 20 hours a day, you do it seven days a week until the crisis is over. As opposed to, it's almost like more relaxing to actually attack the problem than to worry about the problem, and so even today when I have a real deep problem, I'd rather go to work, get the people there, and also all of our, we have a lot of great people, so we were just working it just nonstop all the time. You are kind of breathless. I mean, you have people all around you, some of these companies, people lost their money, their life, their careers, and it's terrible, but you want to help. So even some of these things, we set up outsourcing groups to get jobs for people who have lost their jobs, et cetera, and you just try to do the best you can, and you learn, by the way, that some people in a crisis, they are fabulous, and some people in a crisis, they are like children. I mean, literally like scary little children who can't believe that they have to have any kind of pressure like this, like somehow life should have given them the gift of no problems ever, and so you learn a lot about people in a crisis. You know, it's interesting, when I hear you talking about crisis and you just got to work the problem, one of the things that we talk about at our organization is when there's crisis, it creates focus, and in all honesty, it allows you, if you can navigate that, when you get through the crisis, you've outperformed your peers, there's an opportunity to create some distance between you and everybody else, because you were better prepared to navigate that situation than you executed. During good times, everybody's doing good. During crisis, not everybody executes at that performance, and we've had pretty good times for quite a while now, yes. So let's tackle something that you speak a lot about, which is you are a full-throated patriot and capitalist. That's something that you've said repeatedly, and how do those beliefs, how do they guide your decision-making, particularly in a world that appears or is definitely so divided as we are today? Well, you know, first of all, the most important thing to me is family and all that. Right next to that is my country, and it's not because it's just my country, remember, this country was not a tribe, it was not a nationality, it was an idea, and anyone can become an American, and the power of freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise, independence, you can do what you want, you can live what you want, you can say what you want, you can believe what you want, you get to vote for our people in government, it creates this huge innovation. I don't think all the American public fully understands the power of that freedom. And you've got to, you know, those of us who travel around the world, you'd be surprised how there are far less freedoms overseas, and it's stifling, and you know, the heavy hand of government, which could be pretty powerful out of countries. So I deeply believe that it is this democracy, this country, or this shining city on the hill. It's the arsenal of democracy, it's the arsenal of freedom, it's going to be that way, it's going to last 600 years, and all you've got to do is read history. The world relies on us, even, I tell people, even non-aligned nations rely on America for the safety and security we provide for the world. And you've got to be very careful when you look at what that means for people. So I think we should celebrate it. We should teach civics more, we should teach history more. We could acknowledge our flaws, but we should not denigrate the greatness of this country. So, Jamie, how do we bridge these political divides in our country, or even around the world? How is that going to happen, and what's the future that you see for the United States of America? I'm not, you know, I mean, read history again. We've had divides before, you know, we had the Great Depression, we had, well, we had Civil War, for God's sake, you know, we had Revolutionary War, we've had some terrible times when I was growing up, you know, students were killed on American campuses, you know, Martin Luther King was killed, Robert F. Kennedy was killed, I mean, let's take a deep breath about history, okay, and that's what we are. We have a democracy. Sometimes it looks tough, and sometimes it looks okay, I say participate, get involved, we get involved, as you mentioned, in policy, getting things right, getting policy right is kind of free for the American public, we need to do more of that. Just get involved. I am concerned, away from America, about the free and democratic world, so think of, you know, the wars in Ukraine, the terrorism in the Middle East, you know, those things are challenging the world as we know it. Now, I think we'll be okay, I don't think of divine rights as success, so I think we have to work those things to get them right, so I'm much more concerned about that than our democracy, per se. So J.P. Morgan just recently announced a $1.5 trillion initiative to help fuel America's security and resiliency, and you're going to be investing significantly in advanced manufacturing and defense and energy, AI, and quantum. What's the form of those investments, and what do you think that's going to help achieve over the next five or ten years? Yeah, so, you know, I often ask myself the question, you know, what you should do, so if you read, I write my chairman's letter every year, and last year I talked about all these policies we've got wrong in America, and that we need to fix them, and you know them, housing, and education, and crime, and immigration, and all these things we've got to, like, we could do better, and it's holding us back, and, but this year I started asking the question, well, what can we do about it, what can J.P. Morgan Chase do about it? Now, we do a lot around the American dream, affordable housing, and mortgages, and education, and healthcare, and skills, but the SRI, the Strategic Resiliency Initiative, is to help finance, either kind of with equity money, or big loans, companies who are building things that make America, and our allies, resilient, so think of aerospace, defense, AI, super chips, some of these data centers you read about, think of medical ingredients, that what can we do to secure the future and health of the United States of America, and our allies around the world, and so we're going to add, over the next ten years, another $500 billion of financing, that could be for big companies, and it's also going to be, we're going to also do $10 billion of, more like equity financing, to help, think of a middle market company that makes an optical equipment that goes in F-35 fighter, but they want to build a second plant in anticipation of a government contract, you know, we may buy a piece of the company, give them the money to build the plant, so we're just forming around it, we're putting real power about this, we want to do our part, and, you know, if you look back, I hate crying over spilled milk, we all should have started doing this 15 years ago, you know, the Chinese have been doing this for 15 years, and so we're a little late, you read about rare earths, but we can catch up, we have the time, but we got to do it quickly, and we're also going to write about policy, we have a lot of policy to stop us from doing this, how we do budgeting for the military, a whole bunch of other things, so we're going to do a lot of work, you know, to make sure we're doing the right things to keep us all free and safe. This administration, and Trump's administration, seems to be very focused on trying to lower the amount of regulation and bureaucracy so that private sector, the economy can prosper. How do you see that playing out, and how do you see that impacting the financial services industry? I love the fact about being pro-business, you know, this notion that somehow, you know, being anti-business is going to help the average American citizen, or even the lower paid. So I agree with the concept. I don't think we've done a particularly good job taking care of the bottom 20% of us, our citizens. Their incomes didn't go up, their healthcare is worse, they live in more crime in neighborhoods, their schools don't work really well, and we did that. That's Democrat and Republican policies, by the way. So I agree with that concept. I don't agree with the concept that beating up business is a way to fix it. Business creates jobs, business pays people, business does... So I do think business can get involved, and I may write an op-ed soon about good public policy is free, okay? If we do a better job for schools, it's free. If we do something that's deregulated, our regulatory system has gotten... I'm not talking about banks, by the way. Anyone who would get involved in regulation, you could be a restaurant, you could be a small business, you could be... It is terrible. Federal, state, permitting, local. The affordable housing problem, it's all regulatory stuff. You can't build a multifamily thing, you can't put this here, it doesn't have enough parking, it's gotta have all these things. It's all regulatory. And so we can fix this stuff, and it's free. The government doesn't have to borrow more money to fix it. We already spend the money, we just need to fix the system a little bit. And so I think we should all get involved in trying to fix these policies that would make our country work far better. And deregulation is part of it. If you don't believe me, go to Europe, folks, okay? And Europe used to have a GDP per person of 90% of America. It's now 65% of America. It's on its way to 50% of America, which will jeopardize the health of Europe itself over time. And it's all anti-business, anti-investment, anti-innovation, and they kind of know it. And if they don't fix it, and we should help them fix it, because if Europe does badly, I think it's really bad for the Western world too. So I'm very pro this, and we should do it wisely. Jamie, let's tackle AI for a second. I was in New York last week, and I met with your team. I met with Google, Microsoft, Accenture, Boston Consulting, you name it. And the amount of money that is being invested in artificial intelligence, and the pace of that investment is unbelievable. How is that going to reshape the economy? How is it going to reshape the way we do business these days? Look, it's going to affect, the way I look at it, every application, every job, every customer interface, everything we all do. And you're all going to have your own personal assistants. You're going to have agents that do research for you every time you wake up in the morning. And I agree with Eric, it's going to be unbelievable. It's going to cure a lot of diseases that we've all been afflicted with. You know, my guess is the developed world will be working three and a half days a week in 20, 30, 40 years, and have wonderful lives. There are some dangerous parts, which I'll let Eric describe a little bit here. But I would say embrace it. You know, technology has downsides. It's used by bad people, but embrace it. We had 40 million people working on farms. Tractors and fertilizers is now like one and a half million. We live better lives. We have better food. Those people want to do other things, you know, and so it'll be okay. We've been using it now for 13 years. We have, you know, we spend a lot of money on it. We have, we know exactly what it does in certain things. It's literally at the beginning. There's, whatever you think, there are waves of this coming down the road. And the only thing I'd add to that is if it happens too fast for society to adjust, you know, and I will give you a thought exercise. I think there are 2 million commercial truckers in the United States, and somehow you can push a button, convert it to AI, you know, it's cheaper, faster, safer, less CO2. You kind of want to do it, but you shouldn't do it if you're going to put 2 million people out of jobs. And the way to handle that is retraining, income assistance, slow it down, early retirement, relocation programs, and it's all doable. And that would have to take both government and business doing that together. And so we should be preparing for that today because AI is happening rather quickly. We do it ourselves. You know, we are constantly changing jobs, and we've reduced jobs in certain categories for AI. Almost all the people get redeployed. They go do other jobs. They're very smart, capable people. You know, and I agree with Eric too. Human capital, you can't replace human capital. You can't replace thinking. You know, all these things that people think are going to happen won't happen exactly the way you expect. You know, one of the things we like to say, and this will eventually change it, AI is not going to replace people. AI is going to replace people that don't use AI. And I think that's an important element of what you're talking about. So there's a lot of moving pieces right now. You've got trade. You've got tariffs. You've got Fed policy. You have AI. What is the single most important piece of advice you would give an entrepreneur, CEO, of how to navigate this environment? Yeah, okay, ready? Here's my single piece of advice. There is no one thing. Okay, you know, you mentioned tariffs and trade and politics and, you know, geopolitics and, you know, potential inflation and Fed policy. You're going to have to navigate all that. I think the best way to navigate that is actually, you know, think it through. Kind of make the list of tailwinds and headwinds. They're not all going to happen at the same time. They're going to affect each other. You know, if you look at all these problems we have, sometimes it isn't, you know, people say tariffs. Well, that's just one thing. You know, there are all these other things that take place and, you know, like a lot of straws in the camel's back. And so, and then look at the world a little bit. Like, what are the potential things, outcomes? Can you handle those outcomes? And then you'll be okay, because what you really want to do is survive. Right. You know, and serve clients when times are tough. And so, but there are a lot of things taking place today. And there's a lot of turbulence out there. And to me, that creates a little more uncertainty that you should be prepared for. And hopefully, you know, continue to have this soft landing. But it may not happen. We just don't know. You know, I was just reflecting on what you just said about AI. And this, two years ago, my preparation for this interview would have taken three or four days, back and forth with the communication department. It took probably 10 minutes to come up with a list of questions and quotes. And it's just how quickly life… I was going to tell you, you did a great job. But now I know it was Gemini. Well, I helped Gemini. Just, I polished Gemini a little bit. But it was certainly… So, let's tackle something that's been a little bit interesting for a couple of years. So, you've been famously skeptical about Bitcoin. And, but I think you've come off of that a little bit over the last six months or 12 months. And I know JPMorgan uses a lot of blockchain, token, and a lot of innovation into your business and your approach. How do you balance the risk of investing in technologies that are going to drive innovation and future growth? And what are your thoughts on stablecoin and Bitcoin? So, this is a great way to deal with an issue or something like that. Whenever we meet as a business unit, so it could be a small business unit like consumer branches or a big one like global investment banking, on the table and on the agenda is what are you doing in tech, AI, etc. That is always on the agenda. And I do it differently than other people. I don't say what's in your budget. I always say, are you doing everything you need to do to win in the future? Period. And I don't care what the budget says. I don't care what it is. And you may walk in and say, you know what? I was just over somewhere. I really need to do X. My view is you better be doing X. So, to me, the budget is a roadmap. It is not your boss. And so, I make people. We're going to do that. Stablecoin was one where I don't know how it's going to play out. But that also answers my questions. What do we do about it? We're involved. We're building a stablecoin. We may build it with other banks. We have a JPMorgan deposit coin already, which I can pay you interest on. We use the blockchain. Any of these tools that you want to use for smart contracts, we are simply going to do. I don't know how it's going to sort out. But I'd rather be playing, which keeps us smart, than acting like I know the answer to it. And we do that with all technology. Sometimes, regardless of what I think about it, I want you to be dabbling in it. Because you're being smart and it's much more important than saying, Jamie does or doesn't like it and something like that. And we do that with almost all frontier type of technologies. I'm going to shift on you a little bit. So there's been a historic relocation of both people and capital to Florida and to South Florida. Primarily from the west coast of the country, the northeast, Illinois, DC, you name it. And what are your thoughts on that? Is that going to continue? And for the residents of Wall Street South, how should we think about the future relative to that relocation that's taking place? My bottom line is I think that everything, everyone has to compete. And when I grew up in New York City, I was probably one of those New York City kids that thought that New York City, New Jersey, and the rest of the world, something like that. And you know why New Yorkers are so depressed? Why? Because the light at the end of the tunnel is New Jersey. And when I first started traveling the world, a lot of cities weren't great places, including like London, or Singapore, or Hong Kong, or Nashville, or now they're great. I mean, all these cities, they've got opera and food and infrastructure and terrific universities. And it's a competitive world. It's competitive between countries. It's competitive between cities. It's competitive between states. And you're mentioning a bunch of these states, they're driving business out, you know, and it will backfire. And so people vote with their feet. And, you know, some people act like they vote with their feet because they're selfish. They vote with their feet because they see a better life for them and their family. I'm not mad at someone if, you know, if they leave J.P. Morgan's, they say got a better opportunity. I'm like, I understand. It's your life. I want you to be happy. It's not about you making me happy. And so there's a competitive element to all these things. And like even COVID taught you that you can work. A lot of people can work in different cities and be quite productive. And, you know, we have big technology centers around the world, including Buenos Aires, because they've got a great university on coding and engineering in Argentina. And so Miami and Florida compete. They compete with taxes. They compete with universities. They compete with we have more employees in Texas today than we have in New York. If you go to Texas, you want to build something, you build it. The taxes per personal individual lower. They've got their universities. Make sure the graduate students you want. If you need to change a bus route because you have 5,000 employees somewhere, they just change the route. You know, you go to other cities, you'll be negotiating for 20 years, you know, and I think they're making a mistake. And a lot of those cities do things in the name of good, which create bad. All of these bad policies, in my view, usually hurt the lower paid people more. That's what happens. And they also don't acknowledge their problems. So, you know, I think like in inner cities, we do a lot of work in inner cities in the United States in the schools. But the first thing is raise your hand and say we aren't graduating kids with the skills they need to have a well-paying job. So, I give you skills, 16 weeks, advanced manufacturing or taking care of a car, taking care of a Cessna, coding, compliance, something like that, $60,000 a year job at 17 with full medical. We're not doing it. We're simply not doing it. And then, you know, and I'm not going to blame any particular group here. But if you don't stand forward and say we have a problem, this isn't working, you won't fix it. So, there's a lot to do. And, you know, like going back to Miami, Florida's done a great job. You know, and if you look at what's happening, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia are growing, you know, California, Texas. Texas has just started a new stock exchange. You know, I don't know if it's going to work, but it's, you know, it's going to probably be bad for ISS and Glass-Lewis. And I think that's great. I think those institutions are terrible and should be crushed, you know. And so, I, you know, and the domicile of corporations and litigation, we better start fixing these things because if we don't, folks, in 30 years, we're going the way of Europe. And, you know, and we have to open our eyes and make sure we're quite clear. And if we do it right, it'll help all of our citizens, all of them, not just, you know, the people who you think are well-off. Jamie, you have a very famous quote that says, if you're not confused, you don't know what's going on. I love that. So, that confuses me. What are you confused about most right this second? Eric, I'm always trying to, sometimes, you know, people think these CEOs are totally on top of stuff. Just so you all know, half the time, I feel like I'm riding a Bronco and hanging on for dear life, you know, and all the things you talk about, you know, what does this mean and what does that mean? Well, I worry about all those things and they do get quite confusing. But, again, I heard Eric said, we iterate over and over. We don't try to get the answer in the first time. We meet, we'll do it again, we'll do it again, we'll do it again. And sometimes, you know, I tell people, in most even very complex issues, the answer is waiting to be found. It's waiting to be found. You've got the right people working it over and over, looking at it from multiple different angles. Or at least if you, when you, by the time you make that decision, you've minimized the chance of making a terrible mistake. So, I have 20-year-old kids. They're first year, freshmen's in college. And one of the things that my wife and I struggle with is, what advice do we give young folks today about their professional careers? Given the fact that there's so much volatility in such a quickly changing landscape, the advice that I receive from my parents is completely different than the advice that we should be providing kids today. What would you say? I learn, first of all, the world is faster and it's more complex. It doesn't change my advice that much, but learn, learn, learn, learn, learn. It's a lifelong thing. You learn by already talking about people and reading always. And it's always changing. Whatever profession you're in, it's changing again. You should be reading, thinking, talking, traveling, et cetera. Develop your EQ. Your EQ ultimately is probably more important for your happiness. It's probably more important for management skills. We're just part of a team. I love Ted Lasso. The Ted Lasso is, and Eric's part of it. The team, the coach is trying to get both the individuals and the team to function properly. Get the best out of everybody. Sometimes it dictates discipline. Teach the kids discipline. I'm quite disciplined. I do my homework. I do my exercise and my reading. I do all my pre-reads. I'm always focused in a meeting. But develop your EQ. Your EQ is empathy, communication, follow-up. Are you earning people's trust and respect? There are a lot of people who aren't trusted and respected because they're BSers and everyone else knows. And so they have to be flexible all the time. Have good partners in life. It's important that they take care of their mind, body, spirit, soul, friends, family, and health. That's just got to be part of what you do. Be curious. Develop confidence, but don't be so overconfident, the arrogant. And another one is really important. One great piece of advice, I remember a guy telling a whole bunch of people was, use the brains you have. And this I do think is really important. To figure out the truth, not to justify what you already think. And I see so many people, they are really smart, but that smartness gets rigid. And they think they're so smart that nothing you say is going to change what they think or how they think. And also, don't allow yourself to be weaponized. It's almost the same thing. People will jazz you up your whole life. So if you do all that, you'll have a great life. I love that poem, If. You know, if you keep your head around about yours when all is around losing. If you can walk with kings and talk to the knaves. If you can, it's kind of that. You know, Jamie, when I was getting ready to spend some time with you up on stage, I started, I just assumed you had written a book. And I said, I got to go find this book. I don't think you've written a book. So with that in mind, what do you want your legacy to be when you're done with JPMorgan? What is it you're trying to, what would you want people to say about you when it's all said and done? When I first took over Bank One, a former CEO of a company came to see me and said, you've got to leave a mark. You've got to leave a legacy. And his idea was that we take Bank One International. And I looked at him and said, well, we're doing a shitty job in the United States. I mean, what right do I have to go do it overseas? I got to fix what we got before I do that. I also told him when I go international, it'll be big. It won't be. And I called him up after we did the merger with JPMorgan. I said, that's what I meant. I'm not doing this little rinky-dink stuff overseas. But I'm always afraid when a CEO of a bigger company wants to leave a legacy, I always say, sell the stock. It's not about my legacy. I just want to leave behind a very healthy, vibrant company. And hopefully people say, you know, that son of a bitch made the world a better place. That's it. All right. So just two quick comments, and we're going to bring this to a close. First of all, I was in New York last week, and I have to say this. If you guys haven't, when you go to New York, you got to go check this out. The building that JPMorgan just built at 270 Park, it is phenomenal. It is really just an icon. I understand why it took a little bit of time, because things like that take time. And the American flag in the lobby, it is just world-class. Congratulations. There's no way people don't want to go back to work in their office in that building. And you probably didn't see it. The top 300 feet, and we put it up there, an American flag, which you can see for miles of the building, totally lit up. And we could put anything up there, but not just the American flag. Jamie, we're all done for this morning, but I want to take a second and say thank you. Thank you on behalf of the city of Miami. Thank you on behalf of the American Business Forum. Thank you on behalf of just the floor, the country, for the leadership you provide, the candor and the transparency in which you communicate your messages that have been so unbelievably impactful to this country, to our industry, and to society. So thank you so much for everything you did. George, thank you very much. Did a great job. Folks, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Well done. A pioneering investment inspires you to dig deeper and step up to the highest level. That's the PIF effect.