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May 26, 2015
Why, I Think I’ll Vote for Bernie SandersBy Jamie Dimon, CEO, JPMorgan Chase
I was speaking on the phone the other day with my good friend Hillary when she asked me one stumper of a question—“Jamie,” she said to me, “Jamie, have you thought about who you’re going to vote for in this upcoming election?”
“What upcoming election, Hil?” I asked, not being much of a man for the political life.
“The presidential election, dummy,” she said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some covert emailing to do.” And she hung up.
“Jamie,” I said to myself, “Jamie, fella, who are you going to vote for?” Now, like plenty of other Americans, it’s the government that pays my paycheck, so I guess I ought to take an interest in it. I’ve never worried so much about economic regulations,, or taxes—; I have some great guys down in D.C. who take care of that. But there’s lots of policies I do think matter, so I got to poking through the Wikipedia and did my research, and that’s why I’m voting for Bernie Sanders.
Bernie seems like a heck of a guy. I haven’t had a chance to sit down with him one-on-one yet, and, even more unusually, I don’t have his home, work, or mobile numbers. Like me, he’s a New Yorker, and us New Yorkers are tough, practical, rough-and-tumble characters, thanks to our difficult backgrounds and stuff. Like me, he didn’t attended some highfalutin Ivy League institution. But above all, like me, Bernie cares about the regular guys.
It’s not easy out here for us working stiffs—the women and men who put in long hours to make sure there’s food on the family table, expertly prepared by a cadre of professional chefs using only the finest ingredients. Bernie understands that whether you’re a homemaker, like my wife, who oversees our the staff assigned to our various country estates, or a guy putting in long hours at the office who’s had to substitute for his own presence at family eventsgatherings by buying successivelyincreasingly more lavish gifts for his wife and children, you need to be heard.
Bernie’s perceptive, too. I’ve been following his speeches, and just a week ago , he stold a gathered crowdVermont crowdaid, “This is a rigged economy, which works for the rich and the powerful … You know, this country does not just belong to a handful of billionaires.” I think he’s absolutely right. In fact, the United States is home to about 526 billionaires.And there there was the time Bernie told esteemed economist Alan Greenspan, back in the days when Alan was Fed Chairman, “You see your major function in your position as the need to represent the wealthy and large corporations.” If I know one thing about Alan, and I do, it’s that that’s absolutely the case. Rarely has an economist invested a passion and commitment like Alan’s to the centers of American wealth. It took some convincing over the course of our many meetings, but, to be honest, not even that much.
What America needs right now is someone with a head on his shoulders, someone who understands the importance of robust cash flow in our system ofour government, who knows what a job creator really is, and who cares what happens toabout working guys like me, who are this country’s thankless, under-appreciated backbone. Someone who wants to bring people together, so they can have a real voice, the way I brought together America’s largest banks into a conglomerate behemoth with literally zero negative consequences whatsoever. It seems to me that tThat someone, it seems to me, is Bernie Sanders.
This concludes the quarterly JPMorgan Chase report to stockholders.
Your pal,
Jamie
