“Free-Market Capitalist” Jamie Dimon on “Amazing Power” of Freedom
Plus, NewsGuard faults New York Times for “derision of Trump” in news stories.
JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has been talked about as a potential presidential candidate. If he ever gets tired of running the bank he is welcome here at The Editors as a guest writer. He seems to have more public-policy-related ideas than fit comfortably within the confines of a single annual shareholder letter, so maybe he could use a more regular outlet.
There’s so much good material in Dimon’s annual shareholder letter, which came out today, that the big risk for him as a communicator is that his many messages drown each other out. I will try—this is The Editors, after all—to edit Dimon’s book-length epistle down to something more digestible. He has enough material there, though, for a weekly Albert Shanker-style quarter-page newspaper ad, or a Substack-based newsletter of his own.
The core message, as I read it, at least, is about freedom.
“The heart and soul of the dynamism of America is human freedom — freedom of speech, freedom of religion, free enterprise (capitalism), and the freedom and empowerment brought to us by our democracy through the right to elect our leaders. Free people are at liberty to move around as they see fit, work as they see fit, dream as they see fit, and invest in themselves and in the pursuit of happiness as they see fit. This freedom that people enjoy, accompanied by the freedom of capital, is what drives the dynamism — economic and social — of this great country….We should do more to applaud the virtue and amazing power of our freedoms.”
Relatedly—and interestingly for the head of a company that does business all over the world—Dimon writes patriotically about America and American leadership.
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