One in every of America’s most well-known executives is feeling the political itch. Jamie Dimon, the longtime CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co. hinted at his ambitions to Bloomberg Information. “I really like my nation, and perhaps at some point I will serve my nation in a single capability or one other,” the 67-year-old Dimon mentioned in an interview.
He has not less than one enthusiastic backer. Reuters reported that billionaire hedge fund supervisor Invoice Ackman referred to as on Dimon to run for president in 2024. “We want an exemplary enterprise, monetary, and world chief to handle by means of what’s more likely to be a critically vital decade for our nation in figuring out our future,” Ackman wrote on Twitter. “Jamie Dimon is that chief.”
This is not Dimon’s first flirtation with politics. Again in 2018, CNBC reported, the manager set off a flurry of hypothesis by taking a swipe at then-President Donald Trump. “I feel I might beat Trump,” Dimon mentioned on the time, “as a result of I am as powerful as he’s, I am smarter than he’s. I might be tremendous. He might punch me all he desires, it would not work with me. I would combat proper again.” Dimon handed on a 2020 run, however 2024 is looming, and Trump is the frontrunner for the GOP nomination.
A generational banker
Dimon is the newest in a protracted line of profitable American businessmen who have a look at the White Home and suppose: “Why not?” Throughout the 2020 election cycle, billionaire Michael Bloomberg turned a candidate and Starbucks founder Howard Schultz explored a presidential run, however each bowed out early within the course of. Dimon, who has served as each CEO and chairman of JPMorgan because the mid-2000s, actually has a enterprise that might impress voters: He has constructed the corporate into “the world’s most respected financial institution,” The Economist mentioned — and its largest. He’s “the banker of his technology,” Euromoney’s Peter Lee wrote in 2019.
However Dimon has confronted controversy within the job. JPMorgan paid a $13 billion tremendous to the federal authorities in 2013 to settle costs that it “overstated the standard of mortgages it was promoting to buyers within the run-up to the monetary disaster” of 2008, Reuters reported. It paid one other $200 million tremendous in 2021, in response to The New York Occasions, for letting staff use their private units to debate firm enterprise, which ran afoul of federal monetary oversight guidelines. And there’s the Jeffrey Epstein connection: A former JPMorgan govt says Dimon knew concerning the financial institution’s enterprise with the convicted intercourse offender, The Wall Avenue Journal reported, however Dimon denies the allegation. “I do not recall understanding something about Jeffrey Epstein till the tales broke someday in 2019,” Dimon mentioned.
Dimon has lengthy evinced an curiosity in politics. However nailing down his partisan leanings is not really easy. “My coronary heart is Democratic,” he instructed CNBC in 2019, “however my mind is type of Republican.” Final yr, he made it clear his coronary heart is not too Democratic. “I am not woke,” he mentioned.
The percentages
Is there a constituency for a Dimon presidential run? His feedback about Trump in 2018 provoked an indignant response from the left, suggesting Dimon-as-candidate would come below fierce scrutiny for his firm’s position within the 2008 banking disaster and the Nice Recession that accompanied it. Due to that, Dimon “has no actual shot at turning into president,” columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin instructed Politico. Given the lengthy historical past of failed presidential candidates from the enterprise sector, Dimon is likely to be “a catastrophe candidate ought to he select to run,” Tufts College’s Daniel Drezner wrote at his Drezner’s World Substack.
If he does not run for workplace, Dimon already has a fairly good day job to fall again on. However his time main JPMorgan could also be nearing its finish. After a few years of claiming he would run the financial institution “5 extra years,” Dimon just lately minimize his estimate to “three and a half” extra years. “I can not do that perpetually, I do know that,” he instructed buyers in Might.
Dimon does sound like a person with a marketing campaign platform all labored out, although. In January, he authored a Wall Avenue Journal op-ed calling on America to “lead with its strengths.” Which means a rededication to “freedom of speech, freedom of faith and free enterprise,” he wrote, whereas growing navy spending, “thoughtfully” partaking China and growing a “Marshall Plan” for world vitality and meals safety. “Collectively,” we wrote, “we are able to guarantee America’s management for the following 100 years.”