NEW YORK – Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase interviewed by the Business Insider at the Alfred E. Smith Career and Technical Education High School in the South Bronx and talked about education, the economy, the Trump administration and its stance on immigration.
“I think immigration has been one of the vital things about the growth of America. I’m the product of grandparents who all immigrated from Greece. I hope eventually we have proper immigration. Good people who have paid their taxes and haven’t broken the law, get them into citizenship at the back of the line. I think that can be worked out. If people get educated here, and they’re foreign nationals, get them a green card. I’ve even heard the president speak about that. There are things to do to make immigration work for all of America,” the Greek American CEO and chairman said when asked by Matt Turner if some of the benefits from Trump’s economic agenda could be undone by other policies like trade and immigration.
“It is possible. If you’re talking about immigration and trade, people have made some pretty strong statements on that, but my own view is that they have laid out some real trade issues that are accurate for both China and Mexico, where we can improve upon the trade agreements, and I think we’ll improve on the trade agreements. I may be wrong, but I think that is their objective, and they’re using tough words,” Dimon said.
Jamie Dimon is at number 25 of “TNH’s 50 Wealthiest Greek-Americans 2017 List“.
Listed at a $1.1 billion net worth in 2015, Forbes knocked Dimon out of the “billionaire’s club” early in 2016, estimating his net worth had fallen to just under $900 million due to a portfolio wane, and listed him at $700 million later in the year.
When asked about JPMorgan’s announcement of a $6 million investment in the Bronx as part of its $75 million New Skills for Youth initiative, Dimon replied that “It’s our hometown; JPMorgan Chase banks a lot of people here. My wife [Judy Dimon] does a lot here, and so they’ve been pounding it: ‘We need to do more in the South Bronx.’ We need to get kids getting out of high school, who go on with a job, or go on to college and that leads to a job.”
“You have unemployment now going below 4.4% this morning, but if you go to a lot of inner cities, unemployment among youth — think ages 17 to 25 — is 20% or 25%. The fact that parts of the country are doing well doesn’t mean we shouldn’t focus on the part that isn’t,” he added.
Dimon was born in New York City. His grandfather, a Greek immigrant from Smyrna, was a broker and passed his knowledge of the business onto his son and partner Theodore, Dimon’s father. As a boy, Dimon attended the Browning School, a prestigious all-boys prep school on New York’s Upper East Side. He later majored in psychology and economics at Tufts University, and earned his MBA from Harvard University Business School.
Upon graduating in 1982, Sanford Weill convinced him to turn down offers from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, and join him as an assistant at American Express. Through a series of unprecedented mergers and acquisitions that ensued, they formed Citigroup, then the largest financial services conglomerate in the world. Weill was the one who made the deals, but Dimon was the “whiz kid” who made the numbers work. Dimon left Citigroup in November 1998 due to an internal conflict with Weill.
Read the complete interview at the Business Insider.
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