JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" | full interview

First of all, I'm so glad we're finally doing this, yeah, no, I'm excited to know it's been a while, so let's start with why we're here, why America's best-known banker is in an internal place? low-income inner-city neighborhood in Baltimore. I think it's kind of a microcosm of what banks do, which is elevating society, so most people think of us as an investment bank in a private bank and a commercial bank and we do all those things. but we also bank, you know, 25 of our branches in low-income neighborhoods and we want to improve those as well, so this is the branch here, it's new, we're new to Maryland, so we're now in 48 states, 30 percent of the branches here are in low-income neighborhoods they are in communities we work with local government people local nonprofits leave then the mayor the governor-elect what do they need and we call it community Music from the branch that the community manager gets to know all the local people are churches, schools, businesses and we invite people to get educated about mortgages, wealth, how to start a business etc. we use local food suppliers to build the place that we hire locally so your paychecks go out in the local neighborhood and you can see the spirit of the people, I mean it's very uplifting and it's just part of what we do and then we come to town, we bring everything else to the government for nonprofit banking, we bank cities, schools, state hospitals, so it's just wonderful. way to help improve communities and it is extremely critical that the United States focus on helping the disadvantaged.

I think it's a mistake to just go around and say that's not our problem, and that's why you see a lot of companies doing it. I'm proud of all the people who do it and it's good for business. I mean, if you lift up society, it hurts, it helps everyone. That's what I want to ask you: have you done this now in Detroit, have you done this here, have you done this in parts of Dallas um, you're not a charity, you're doing this for profit, yeah, so people see that There is a small part of charitable money that I sometimes call an accelerator, so if you can put that small part of charity on top of that it can generate 100 million dollars in loans, but it is not made for charities to be sustainable.

Things that are not sustainable don't work very well, but once we have collaboration with the local government, no, we will be here. We intend to make profits here and open accounts here and do things like that, like I said, if you lift up Baltimore, you lift up all the businesses here you lift up all the people, you have more jobs, more wages, better social outcomes, better real estate value, like that. which is It's critical that we do it and it's very good for business in the long run and if everyone did it, you know, it would be very good for all of America if everyone did it, if all the Banks of America are on the other side of the street, it's that way.

I'm going to mention any competitor, but this is a much more attractive branch, but when I mean fundamentally, when you lend money, both parties are at risk, so by coming here, JPMorgan has to change some of the parameters because you are reaching people who are unbanked yeah, how do you know if someone is creditworthy if you've never owned a home, never had a bank account, how do you know you're making a difference? It's a great question, so when you try it, when you're here and you ask and you know the neighborhoods and you work with the government.

You do several things, that's why we do special things that we call special credit. I don't follow the legal parameters, but you can use other data that is not used. In traditional subscription, did you pay rent for 10 years? So you and I would say that if there is a mother or a father, a family that pays rent for 10 years, that is a good sign of credit, we put a little effort into that. and so we live and we learn, and a lot of data can be used to make the government here realize that when it comes to improving neighborhoods, you can't do it, you can't have a block where 50 houses, you know, 50 townhouses are bad. or destroyed and 50 are occupied, we have to raise them all, so the government here came up with a very special program to put the initial money to rehabilitate the entire block, once they have rehabilitated the entire block, we can intervene and start building. mortgages so that people can buy the houses and live there, so there are several plants to do it in the fund of entrepreneurs of color who do small businesses, you know, we give them an advisor as well, which gives us great comfort.

We're doing the right thing, so you've been critical in the past of government-backed lenders like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for their role in the last crisis and for relaxing the ability to borrow. All this was at the time a good intention. increase home ownership yes you can have a good intention and you are fixing it wrong you are absolutely right you know things were done wrong or wrong so there are many examples where lenders did something wrong and the case of banks and things like that, but we test, we learn, we test, we learn, eh, so these are not government programs, they are programs that we do and we feel quite comfortable doing something good, we take on additional risks, yes, but that's part of our work, we are Bank Venture.

Capital companies, new banking companies, we create a lot of people, we are adults, we are big kids, we know that your credit cycles go up or down, so we don't take as much risk of a company going under, remember Fannie and Freddie went bankrupt, the government paid hundreds of billions of dollars for that and the other thing, by the way, is that part of the underlying was hidden, people didn't really know what other people were doing on the underlying, which is not the This is the case, so you think the general intent of increasing home ownership is really important, yes, but in this moment that we're in now, you have mortgage rates, about seven percent, six and a half, yes, for there, it's difficult to access, but the Federal Reserve is also trying to cool a bubble in the housing market, yes, we look through that, so we are not doing this and pulling our horns because the markets are good or bad.

You come to a community and you start doing it. So obviously we're probably doing fewer mortgages now because of the higher rates, but we're in the community, we have loan officers in the community, we're going to learn more about the community, uh uh, and we're going to look beyond the actual rates, remember The important thing about mortgages and that's why I criticize some public policies, sometimes mortgages are how most Americans got their net worth and if you can't get a smaller mortgage to buy a house, it's difficult to build net worth. how often people fund their small business startup, so it's absolutely critical and one of the things that we've been trying to change a little bit is because of all the excessive rules now and I'm talking about things that would make the risk.

In terms of securitization of origi

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services, the cost of a small mortgage is probably 50 basis points higher than it should be, so a 150,000 mortgage or a two hundred thousand dollar mortgage is less affordable for many people and That is due to regulatory policy, not the Bank. policy and so, you know, I think there are things to do that can make mortgages much more affordable. Well, you're saying not right now, not necessarily at least change that right now, yeah, a bigger picture of this effort right now. You said it's important to try to do things to address and build communities, so if you're trying to combat discrimi

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, increase racial equity, that's admirable, but the flip side is that a critic would say that a bank of Wall Street is very bad at loading debt on the poor, how do you respond to that?

Because you are a pretty ignorant person. Well, you just spent a lot of time in Washington. I'm sure I learned a lot of criticism of the big bad banks, that's a different topic. I'm not trying to reduce anyone's debt and yes, I've heard about the big bad banks, but we're here, we're doing jobs, we want to make good mortgages, we want to make good small business loans, we want to educate people on how to open an account. . to save money, we have products that are special for low-income communities and things like that, we're going to do that, it's good for this community, if this community does better, it's good for this community, it doesn't hurt anyone.

In fact, it helps other communities, but how do you reassure people who say that the lender should not be the educator? We're educating them how to save money, that's what those classes are about, yeah, how to save money, how to buy a house, how to run a business if you start a business how to get a uh uh how to sign a lease how to negotiate a contract with the government so a lot of your education is not lending money so, you know, the specific account that we have is an account where you I know you get a debit card, checking account, all the services, ATM services, branches, you can't overdraft if you buy this account, it doesn't allow an overdraft, so we have a lot of products and services that we live and learn, and I don't worry. about the naysayers all the time you know we go, we have a true north, we know what we are doing, we build societies all over the world, we do it from low income to high income, we do it, we are banks, governments, we are banks, the IMF , we are banks. the World Bank we bank middle market companies we bank small businesses we are in low income neighborhoods and we want to help we want to do everything well and we have done everything well we feel quite comfortable with all the things we do and that are also good for shareholders in the long run term, so you've been doing this particular program since about 2020, you invested about $18 billion in it, do you want to expand it?

Yeah, so we've been doing shows. So for a long time, the most important lesson was that we made this great effort in Detroit, so Detroit is one of the major American cities that had not had a Renaissance. They ended up with a fabulous mayor, Duggan, we worked with him, we paid extensive attention. almost at the 10th anniversary 250 million dollars a lot I won't repeat the same things, a lot of similar things here, but working with local nonprofits, local institutions, local government and it works, you know you can turn a city, you can make works better if you go to downtown Detroit and look at it today compared to what it was 15 years ago and you can see the powerful effort that informed us, you know what we were able to do.

We do this in other places in different ways and we're always learning, but now we're doing something like this in 15 cities, those states, those governors and mayors come to you or still do sometimes, but you know we and we talk, We always talk to a lot of them, but I think you heard Peter Shearer say that collaboration is what makes it so we're not asking for gifts from cities or states or anything like that, but we also need their help like I do. I gave that very specific test on affordable housing here, yes, so that the rules and the laws are different in Michigan or they are different in other places, so if you have people working together, it works if you know if the local government doesn't Don't tell me they like business and you know, turn the scans and you don't know things were bad and stuff like that.

No, it is difficult to want to do business there and they are making a mistake. What they should do is go to Detroit, come here. visit a branch to see what policy works and what policy doesn't work so in cities across the country right now there is a homeless problem and part of it is related to many problems but one of them is just accessible and affordable housing, what incentive do you see? for a developer right now to come in and try to take a loan and build that type of housing, which prevents us from being one of the largest affordable lenders in the country and a lot of other banks doing great things.

I work with that too it's first of all it's very local it could be zoning laws it could be requirements it could be billing requirements uh it could be local construction it could be a million different things but we often provide the equity or the debt or the mezzanine to build affordable housing we do it everywhere, so I can give it. I would have to send them a big position paper, different in each state. It's a big deal, it can be done, but you really need to have competent affordable housing policies and that comes down to what you say about these community relations and community laws, your community laws, your municipal laws, your laws.federal, they are a lot of legal things.

I mean, you've been in Washington for a few days, have you talked about this? with legislators, I mean, I've talked about a lot of this stuff all the time. I go to Washington all the time. No, that's hard for us. We make affordable housing. Yeah, and again, all those other topics are so local that you really have to understand. at the local level so that our people get involved in that and we get involved in federal policies, but I think one really important thing is a microcosmet what a bank does and you know and then other companies have heard of other companies that come to have lower income. neighborhoods and what they're doing, but it's just you, the most important thing is also the federal government policy around infrastructure, education, tax regulation, health care, so we know we have to attack these problems from both sides, good public policy at the federal level, good. public policies at the state level and then people like us doing our jobs, you know, that's what we were meant to do.

Finance grows, develops people's dreams, we help them achieve their goals, big picture, um, because you've lived through many crises in this country. and looking back you were at the helm during the financial crisis and the Great Recession, the sovereign debt crisis, the pandemic, this moment we're in feels like a transition point, a turning point and I wonder how you think about where America is right now, yeah, I think it's, I mean, I think it's very important for people to understand. The United States is the most prosperous nation the world has ever seen. Our basic principles of freedom, freedom of expression of your religion are incredible.

The innovation is unparalleled anywhere in the world, so start from an incredible position of strength, the economy is going through a lot of things and you just mentioned them, coven and things like that, and we don't, we don't always really know if you have a mild recession or a hard recession and if it happens we will be fine. I feel bad, terrible people lose their jobs. We want it to be as brief as possible. I think you write about a tipping point, but that tipping point has to do with geopolitics, it's about Ukraine, oil, Russia, war, migration, food, National Security, China, trade of everything that bucket of stuff and I would put it in that category. quantitative tightening which basically consists of reducing liquidity in the banking system the world actually forgets us for a second that a high dollar could be very difficult the dollar raises rates and quantitative ordering in smaller countries around the world the Bank World Cup and the MF has been warning about this, yes, so I say that you have to put that whole combination in what will happen in geopolitics.

I would say that is critical and Ukraine is a turning point. Ukraine is a turning point where you know maybe all this. The illusion that we had that somehow the worlds of peace and everything can be fine, that should have been shattered and therefore we should be thinking about how can America do great in the next hundred years, what policy we should have, obviously, it's a change and you know. We hold our military in the highest regard but what they accomplish around the world is extraordinary but what do we need and part of that is just having a very strong economy that helps pay for all of this and otherwise you have to make our allies? you're not going to end the world we really want when I looked at your last letter to shareholders, which I know you take a direct role in writing the words.

I write every word well, that was in April. I didn't help, but I write. every word, everyone goes through a process and thinks about these things and when you sorted out some of the things that worried you, Ukraine was right up there with all the internal problems that happened right after the war started, now we're at a point where Some people look and say, "Okay, it wasn't the worst case scenario in Europe in terms of a severe recession. They're finding ways to get oil and gas elsewhere. Do you think the same way now as you did then in terms of risk?" ?a total sense of security that you've had this war for nine months or whatever and that somehow it's okay that oil prices have gone up so much Europe's migration into recession has been extraordinary, haven't you seen the.

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effect of food, prices around the world if you go to Europe, they would, they would take it much more seriously than the Americans, they are on the front line, those missiles are going to Poland, you have new, basically, nuclear blackmail.

I mean, it's like as serious as it gets, so we should all hope that it goes away, that there's some kind of armistice or agreement, you know, by the way, it's good for Ukraine, but this is the Western world under attack. I mean, this is to be taken as something like that. that and wars, if you read the history of wars, they don't start or end like people think they would when they started, yes that's how all wars are, so the danger of this war is extraordinary and it can continue. for years, but there is an oil and gas slick, it seems like there you know the Europeans will get over it this winter, but this oil and gas problem is going to continue for years, so you know if I was a you know in the government or anywhere else. otherwise I would say I have to prepare for it to get much worse.

I hope not, but I would definitely be setting myself up for it to get a lot worse. What do you think in terms of what you should prepare for on the energy front? Well, it's always like that, it's several things, but on the energy front we need cheap, reliable and safe oil and gas. The problem is that many people think that the high price of oil and gas is good for CO2, it is not so cheap and reliable. Germany, I mean, Europeans are terrified because energy prices are two, three, four, five times higher than ours, which hurts consumers, governments have to do something about it and hurts companies, you know, and it's just started, so the pain is the suffering can get a lot worse and on the other hand, it has the benefit that lower prices have the benefit of having more production, okay, they have the benefit of helping poor nations, to people with lower incomes, to our allies who are desperate for safer energy and CO2, because quite predictably carbon emissions are increasing because rich nations and Poor people around the world turn their coal plants back on, they can't afford expensive energy and they can't afford to have no energy, so you know, to solve it, we'll go up. kind of need all the above permit plans gas is the best and cleanest way to reduce coal, which is the best way to reduce CO2, so it will be a really thoughtful policy.

Contributory policy will get us there, but it is also a military policy. Economic policy that includes trade, so when I say economic, I'm talking about you know trade is one thing, but economic is investment rights, so everything that relates to national security will have to be changed again, as you know about semiconductors and rare earths, and I'm I'm going to ask you about that, yeah, okay, and then if you can ask me, no wait, but those are all things that need to be fixed. Well, let's focus on energy, because you know President Biden has called it Putin's price cycle, but he also blamed price inflation on corporate profits and I know this irritates you, yes, you've argued that the Energy costs are not high due to price speculation, but rather due to the dramatic decline in energy investments, resulting in reduced supply. when demand increases, then if that's true, what will it take to increase lending to businesses so they can make those investments?

Yes, this is a little more complicated now because part of it is that companies don't want to do it. Why is it that part of me, when people talk about excise taxes on profits, it's something that they can't get, they can't get permits, they can't get leases and things like that, and a part of us, who are investors, thinks that Are they pushing hard to go green? but do not invest too much capital, where you do not make profits with oil at a high price, you know that it is not enough like that and that's how it is, so there is and think that it is a global problem that the United States produces 10 million barrels per day, the world consumes 100 million and the other thing to remember about oil, which is really important, it goes up and down for a million different reasons and people tend to look at one reason and say that's it, but that's right.

Now it has gone down considerably, mainly because China slowed down and here it is going to go into recession and people think that there could be a global recession, so the future price of oil is going down, those things will reverse and this, under investment in oil and gas, it will hurt you. Two or three years from now that's pretty predictable, but it's not today, so we have time, you know, I hope the administration, you know, are looking at all of these issues. I've talked to John Podesto, now leading the Ira Act about what we can do to accelerate CO2 reduction but have better, cheaper, safer energy, not just for ourselves but for particular allies around the world, so the United States is preparing for record oil production in 2023, but it's like the refinery becomes something that is a choke point, so is the administration making that specific type of investment difficult?

I think we should talk to the oil, the oil people, about that. Well, look, this world is really complex. I mean, if you don't have the pipelines, you can't sit down. in the refinery, if you can't know this, you can't do that if you don't have the charging stages, you can't do this if you build electric cars but still coal generated electricity doesn't generate CO2, so I guess I just think. We really need to look at this in detail and hope

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y there will be a lot of smart people working on it. I think it's important that we spend a lot of time on it because, how critical energy is in the world, remember that it is also 40% of food prices.

So this is not a simple issue and it is that, you know, food prices, the question of hunger, this is a new question: how far can you drive your car? How much does gasoline cost? So, I put all this, I think we need it, I would call it Marshall. Plan energy, you know, and that has to be all of the above and all the people involved, but okay, you mean the inflation reduction law, that's just a small part of what you're imagining for a Marshall Yeah, and that's it, it's a huge I mean, we're still studying every piece for renewables and electric vehicles and a lot of different things, but it's not just about the infrastructure that we're building, it's about the competition in everything. the world, from access to rare earths, I mean, when you dig.

In that, it's a really complex thing, those are the things that the ingredients needed for electric vehicles exactly that China has a monopoly on right now, they are a monopoly on production, not where they are, so we have the most rare in America, whether we can produce them here or not because there are certain laws and requirements, that's a different topic, we need to build networks. You know, we don't get permits to build networks. So you know that one of the deals that was made between President Joe Manchin was the permit bill. that permit bill is for gas pipelines we need to get gas to Louisiana to get that gas from Louisiana to Europe to help our allies and reduce the cost there that also reduces your carbon use so it's very green if you look in the margin and that's it.

It gets very complicated and we just have to do the work, how would you say? I remember covering the financial crisis and all this and the frustration between Wall Street and Washington that they just talked over each other all the time, where do you put that? Now in conversation people here listen to what you are trying to explain in terms of market dynamics and investing, so I think sometimes it is justifiable for people to talk to each other because harm was done, no harm was done in the financial crisis, not all major banks would have done so. failed and not everyone is equally guilty and all that, but and then of course people have simple political slogans that they know get them elected or something, but I think there's a lot of talk, we talk all the time about the administration in multiple levels and we should and I'm going to help any president try to do the best job for America and those conversations are pretty intense so Peter talks to them, I talk to them, they've come to the brt that you saw part of and so on.

It is very important that we do it and you will not always get your way and there will be disagreements,but that's okay too, yeah, and I know you talk, you talk about planning, which you're known for. I want to ask you about China it looks like they are loosening some of their coveted restrictions, perhaps moving away from zero greed, how do you see this impact long term and short term? So, you know my own opinion and, again, they have to do what the politicians see. riots and you can also see the damage they are causing to their economy, so they made them announce like yesterday 10 different things, it seems that I read them quickly this morning because they sound good to me.

I think they want to get their economy going again, that's a function of capital. they covered trade laws and things like that and they just started having real conversations or they said they're going to a Divine Administration, the most important thing about China and the Americans, which we really talk about, that we really engage at a detailed level about we agree where we disagree and try to solve these things, then we also work on some of the things we have to do together, climate terrorism, nuclear proliferation, bioterrorism, where it is in our interest to solve those problems and we cannot do without United States and China.

Because it's not just the second largest economy in the world, our countries are incredibly intertwined, they're incredibly intertwined, but you actually use American leadership to do this and bring in our allies, if we do it just laterally, it's not going to work. . If we, because the Chinese will go negotiate better deals separately or you know God knows how many different countries, then we have to do it in combination with allies so that the United States and China compete directly and the chances of conflict increase. the Homeland Security front um, former Goldman Sachs CEO and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, I know you know this, has warned that the two economies are too intertwined to separate at this point, how do you think about that and the growing conversation about trying to find a separate supply? chains and stop relying on cheap Chinese manufacturing, so number one, I'm a patriot and national values ​​are paramount, absolute national security, American national security, I think Taiwan aside, I'll leave it to the experts in that kind of things and most importantly. thing for the American public we have the most prosperous economy in the world ever if we open our doors to the people millions of billions of people come here we have the best innovation we have food water and energy we are in extraordinary shape and we should not be shy about respect or be afraid or panic or something, what we need are tough negotiations and they have already done that.

National Security that it will be about semiconductors, rare earth penicillins, you know, that's unilateral, the Chinese do it. that we do it, most companies support it, that gets very complicated, we talk about export controls and investment controls, but basically the government is working with people like us, many of the companies, but how do you implement something So? That's good for the country. Security, but it doesn't diminish the good performance of American companies abroad exactly because it could do that and again it gets very specific, the other two business things are not as important. One is you know every company wants to have a secure and reliable line, you know, the supply chain. that some people are already moving their stuff, you can move some stuff to Mexico, you can move it to India, etcetera, so that's already happening, and the other and the third is what I call that's how we all see competition competition unfair state controlled. competition and again that needs to be done with allies too because, you know, if I was all over Latin America and they said to me, hey, you know we actually love the United States, but China is here with monetary technology, they're making it cheaper and what .

What is my alternative? America must have alternatives. Some of those alternatives will be that we need better development. Fund better diplomacy. We need better rules for how banks or companies could invest in foreign countries to do things that make sense. comprehensive, the government is fully aware of it, it is doable, it will take work and time, but you are just saying that the state department and those other types of softer diplomacy must be strengthened immediately, immediately and diplomacy, I say development, finance , TRUE? because you know that if the Chinese are going to go there and build the bridge and build a plant or buy the lithium mine and there will be American companies that could do it, but won't, for a bunch of different reasons, you should ask.

The question is why and I don't want to go over all the different reasons, but there are reasons why American companies don't go to certain countries, so anything can be done and I think you know we're rolling up our sleeves. It should never have gone this far, it did. I don't want to cry over spilled milk, but, and the other thing that people remember is that the United States could do a lot of things unilaterally, you know, if we don't, if we don't believe that they. you're being fair to , look, I think it was the right thing to focus on China years ago.

I think it was the wrong way to do it, but they're not going to go down until it's negotiated as part of something else there. there may be areas that should be reduced immediately just to help certain producers and certain consumers that you referenced, some of the domestic ones, but we like, we have to go back to the TPP, we have to stop thinking about free trade within a negotiated trade, I mean, obviously. We should not sign the agreement if it is not in the interest of the United States of America, but think about it, people who know what is going to come back to the TPP, no, but we are making politically toxic mistakes.

I know, but I don't know what that means. It means that because we have a trade policy with Asia that is working today, the notion that says we are not going to have a trade agreement is a mistake, because we have one today, it would have been better, so we simply have to change how we end it too it's strategic in this case it's also geopolitically strategic to think about the real politics here this would have been better in an American era, an Asian trading system, uh, that's set up the right way, we think it has the right rules, requirements, laws , governance, etc. uh, and then China might be invited to participate.

It's not anti-China, well, when you talk about and reference their investment in semiconductors, electric vehicles, those kinds of things that are part of the Bind administration's domestic economic revitalization, but it's also a bit of a national security policy. In both cases, we mixed them exactly a little bit exactly, but there are some critics who say that's causing a little bit of market distortion. I think look, you know this in itself gets complicated and remember that it's written by Congress and, on the right. So the body is pretty good, but it has really irritated the Europeans because America builds America.

It is a big disadvantage for a part of the world with which we really need very good relations. When people complain, the first thing you should always do is say where they write and they are right about some of it, not about everything and you know the president said we can modify it, modify it and electric vehicles and I think that could be done, yes, but here's the really important part of this. not only that if Europe goes its own way on trade and they said they were going to make their own Ira bill, be their own trading bloc, buy the United States by Europe, build Europe, that's very bad for the global negotiator , trade, that is very bad for National Security which is very bad for the next century of the United States and for me and that is why I think this does not seem like it is, but it is absolutely critical for National Security.

If we do this right, I don't disagree at all. Um, I want to ask you about the way foreign policy is being pursued right now with Russia, for example, first was the financial war, that's the direct hit that the United States is taking against Russia and I'm wondering how you think that was handled. . I thought so. it was handled extremely well, in fact, I think there have been times where we exaggerated our financial sanctions and used them because you know you don't want people to say, I don't want to do business with American banks or American entities and things like that.

It's been used a little bit misused, but there are times when it's used correctly, so here are both the European and the American authorities, you know the Treasury Department here, uh uh, who said this is a way to help Ukraine in part of our great geopolitical war and they were right. It was both sanctions and export controls and things like that, and I think they did it the right way. There is constant communication, I mean, if I say, I mean every day about how these things are carried out and which ones work and which ones don't. and how fast it's going to work and all these various things, but it's been pretty good.

I think they were very right to do it in this case, but you couldn't do this with China, could you? because economies are too intertwined. you couldn't, if you had to you could, but that would be it, the economic effect on China and the world would be dramatically worse, no one would benefit from it and whatever it is, it would probably be worth it to China than to us because, as I said, we have all the food, more energy we need, we have peace in North America and here, China, the American public may not know China.

They import 11 million barrels of oil a day, they're not sitting there saying how comfortable they are. They're sitting there saying how vulnerable they could be, so if you're going to look at China, look at the whole thing, take a deep breath and figure out what's in our interest and then negotiate and, like I said, a lot of that. It can be done unilaterally, it has to be done multilaterally, as with your allies you had said in this country that you were happy with the midterm results. I mean, the old saying was that stagnation is good for Wall Street, but when you're talking about very big challenges to the country that haven't been addressed, that seems to be a risk.

Yes, I didn't say anything about stagnation. No, I'm saying it's well, I thought that is not what we are going to get with this, I thought that The election was good because in both parties the crazy people were not elected and the rational thing, when I was just in Congress, I liked the idea that they want to progress and I think they can do it. There are many examples in history under George W. Bush, Obama Clinton, where when Congress was divided, a lot of good things were actually done, but they were really done and I would rather see collaboration and good things being done , so I remain optimistic about it.

I think there's a good chance they'll do some good things, so we're days away from the government funding deadline and Thomas will have to pass the bill to avoid a shutdown. He is a risk manager. Where is the risk level placed here? Well, financing is different from the debt ceiling. I know, that's fine, but the risk is that once the power shifts in January, it could become yes. I would say that government funding is not the way to use it, it is not the way. way to run a railroad, I mean basically end up spending a lot more money too because the American public man, I know you pay people and then you pay them more to get them back to work, it costs us a lot more money, so even if you want to be physically responsible, the debt ceiling is not a good idea, you are talking about June of next year and we will deal with that later, well there is some debate about whether it should be done now in these last few weeks while the Democrats still have the control.

I've avoided that kind of thing as I should because the catastrophic effects of an actual default are not up for debate. I understand both sides well. I wanted how they want to use it is catastrophic or potentially catastrophic. I would never take that risk, so if it were up to me. yeah I would do it now, take it off the table, so you said in 2019 on CNBC, my heart is democratic but my brain is a little Republican, the world has changed a lot since 2019. I wonder what you were thinking right now. I'm pretty much the same place and I look, I think we are our key brothers, we take care of ourselves, we do committee branches and I want my employees to feel good and I want the customers to be happy and I just think we need rationality. policy, you know, really rational policy and a lot of that policy is not Democratic or Republican, getting infrastructure built right, it's not Democratic-Republican, we should all recognize that inner city schools don't do particularly well in In many areas, half of the children do not do it.Graduate, that is not the Democratic Republic that recognizes the problem and then talks about solutions.

Medical attention. We have the best in the world. Hell, I'm a beneficiary of it, but we have some of the worst too. It has cost almost 20 of the GDP. 50 million people without insurance. enormous. obesity high blood pressure I think there are a lot of things that can be fixed and you know I can go on and on we need a good policy, you know, good and no policy, sometimes bad policy, you made reference to your beneficiary of the health system, you had this near-death experience, yeah, how has that changed the way you view your work right now?

And I wonder if it's changed, if you have any desire to go into government, no, uh, you know, I don't play golf, you know, basically, I still love what I do. I love helping people I love the people here Sometimes I'm very proud of them uh and that's why my point of view hasn't changed I don't want to do things I'm always going to do something I'm not going to you You know, go smell the flowers and things like that. I'm not sure I'm fit for government. I want to help my country. I will do everything I can to help my country and it seems like you have a lot of ideas to do that and we have a lot of videos yeah.