JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon says high inflation hasn't been 'slayed'

David, let's start with the Fed, which is where um we began our last conversation with a couple of um portfolio managers, investment strategists. Um and I'm curious what Jamie Dimon told you about inflation and, you know, how he thinks about it as it relates to the bank as well and what the Fed can do about it.

Yeah, Julie, um, you know, he really echoed his what he's been saying for most of this year and arguably for a couple of years, which is that inflation has proved a little bit stickier and might be going up um over over the course of this year, um due to the fact that there are these longer-term um investing um themes going on in the market like infrastructure, AI, militarization of the world.

Um, so he said to yesterday to me that inflation hasn't been slayed and he's continually concerned about that. Um but on the other hand, he also did point out the strength of the economy and he really pinpointed um the labor market there.

Um he also pointed to um uh business formation as well as well as um overall corporate earnings at this point. So he wasn't all glum. I would say he he didn't come off as incredibly dour, but obviously this is kind of something he's been talking about for a while is that the fight for inflation isn't over yet.

Yeah, for sure. Um part of all of that also is AI and the right now upward pressure it's having on prices, maybe eventual down pressure it could have on inflation. Um and it's pertinent of course for Diamond for a lot of reasons, both how they're using AI in the bank and how they're investing in AI. So what did he have to say about that?

Um well, I actually asked him a little bit about the the financing boom, um that side of the AI of AI and then also the risks. Um now on the financing boom, um earlier this week, his uh his uh top lieutenant of JP Morgan, uh Doug Petno actually um spoke about this and he said that they

the the bank has been modeling, um in his words, the blast radius for a potential bad uh outcome of the AI investing cycle. And effectively, um Diamond explained it to me pretty clearly about how they're underwriting um uh particularly data data centers and thinking about these deals. And a lot of it comes down to compute and a lot of it comes down to the pricing that um that that uh

people are paying for compute and whether or not that shifts. And so that's kind of the risk. Another piece is obviously a lot of these data centers are backed by huge tech companies, and so that comes down to whether or not those tech companies can pay it. So he said a lot of it comes down to um what exactly is the risk in each of these deals that the bank is taking.

Um so overall he's sounded pretty um pretty firm uh about uh their risk management policies there. On the AI risk side though, um he he

stopped short of calling for a slowdown similar to uh or uh you know, in contrast to what um some of the AI leaders have have said uh over the past week. But he did go far enough to um uh voice some support for what I'd call a lighter touch federal oversight.