FULL Q AND A: JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon Delivers Remarks At Reagan National Economic Forum

So, first of all, welcome everybody. Thrilled to be here. Those tectonic plates, they're still shifting. They're still moving. They're still the most important thing that's taking place in the world. They dwarf the short-term economy, and that's the war in Ukraine. And I wish we were more supportive of Ukraine. That's the terrorism in the Middle East. It's now the Iranian war, which I hope settles properly for us. And then you have things like the huge global deficits, the remilitarization of the world, the restructuring of trade, and those are tectonic plates that may very well affect the future of the free world. And, you know, my eyes on that, that's not a forecast about the short-term economy. I just think it's the most important thing that we all have to roll up our sleeves and worry about, which is why we started the security resiliency initiative, the American dream initiative, to do our part in trying to make sure those things turn out the right way.

You know, not really because I think last year we spoke about Ukraine and we said, you know, it's the evil axis. It's Ukraine, Iran, North Korea. You know, the other thing I hear a lot of people, they talk about Iran, they usually mention or at least some people was an imminent threat. It was an imminent threat. No, a threat is when I'm threatening you. They've been killing people, terrorized people for 47 years. And if you actually think about it, and they had proxy wars. They've been doing it not in the Middle East. They've been doing the United States. They killed a lot of Americans. They killed a lot of Americans on October 7th in Israel. They killed a lot of people in Africa. And my thought is why did we put up with it? Why do we even put up with these proxy things? Remember Ronald Reagan when Gaddafi was doing a bunch of stuff, he didn't pretend to hurt him. He tried to kill him and Gaddafi backed off. So, you know, next time we should go for a head of the snake. And maybe, and this is obviously hindsight, I hate crying over spilled milk. Maybe we should have done is like 25 years ago, get all the allied nations, get 500,000 troops around Iran and told them this is over. We're not putting up with this stuff anymore because that would have been a better outcome because I do agree Iran having a nuclear weapon may be the biggest threat facing mankind because if they have it, so will Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, South Korea, Philippines, Japan, Australia, and then I don't know how you stop real proliferation at that point.

Well, I think, you know, so the foundation for us, we want to maintain, we should, we must maintain the strongest military in the world. That is the best protection against anything you see today or that you don't see today. And foundational, the best economy in the world. They kind of go hand in hand. I remind people, you know, if you want to keep the dollar as the reserve currency, you know, if we're not the preeminent military and the preeminent economy in the world in 30 years, we will not be the preeminent reserve currency. They actually go hand in hand. It's not just an economic kind of issue on the economic side. You know, my view and it's a little different than you see this administration. I think economic allies are critical. We have a lot of them. We have a huge common interest. We have a common value system. We have a common interest. We should protect each other. So you talk about all this trade stuff with China. The best protection in my opinion is that the Western world bring back in the things it needs for security, which we'll talk about in a minute, but that we have economic relationships that are profound and deep. Help our economy and help. I think if we're, this is a little bit of a pipe dream that we can, we should go to Europe and say if you do the right things, we'll give you one big beautiful free trade deal. The right things are the Draghi Report. We kind of know what they are. They're struggling. They're literally slowly walking off a cliff over time and they need our help and so I want to keep it together and I, you know, put Australia, Philippines, Japan, South Korea in there. So I just think those economic things are critical and they're being challenged a little bit. Not that all trade is bad. There are a lot of flaws in trade but I'd like to make that stronger not weaker. And it would be a great geopolitical home run against potential adversaries dwarfing all other things.

I think they could. You know, I just, I'd like to see them resolved, finished. You know, it's that we should get them done. Obviously things that we need to do here we should do here, which we'll talk about in a second. Things where there's a lot of unfair trade. You know, surprise surprise, it's been going on for hundred years. It's not just tariffs. It's limitations, it's regulations, it's cheap loans, it's cheap land, the cheap subsidies. It's a million different things. Yes, you should counter unfair trade. And tariffs is one way to counter unfair trade, but I think it'd be good to get these things to conclusion. In particular, Canada and Mexico. I mean, we have a huge common interest with Mexico and Canada. And we have one big economic system which actually is in all of our benefits. And so I think that could be hugely beneficial. And remember Canada has oil, gas, lithium, potash, you know. So there's a good geopolitical reason to do it.

Well, it's not going to happen because, you know, the reserve currency is not, this is an IQ test. You ready? If and you can ask anyone in the world, if you can only put all of your money in one country, which one would it be? Well, there's only one that's protected by the Atlantic and the Pacific, the United States military, the rule of law, the ability to own. When we give you a United States dollar, you can do whatever you want with it. You can start a business, you can buy a home, you can send it to Switzerland, you know, you can do all these various things. That's not true in a lot of countries. So you're not going to take a quote a reserve currency where the government decides what you can do with it, which is what China, you know, China has capital controls, but that's basically what that is. And they need them for a whole bunch of different reasons. So as long as we maintain that strength and I think it does relate to free trade. So China will become more of reserve currency. Other countries might, but we will still be the predominant one as long as we maintain the predominant economic position in the world. And that is predicated also the predominant military position. I was in a country, I don't want to mention the name of it, and they were complaining about America and said, you know, we're so uncertain about America, we've taken our gold out of America, we've put it in our vaults here. And I looked at them and said, you do realize your vaults here could be taken by three armies who aren't that far away. And, you know, that's real politic, folks. That's the world. So the notion that you're secure like that, this nation's secure. And so I think people have to think a little bit differently when you talk about foreign economic relations and, you know, real politics is the only way to do it. Anything short of that you're making a mistake.

It's been fabulous. And, you know, look, if you read what I write and talk I complain about government a lot and we should, but I also asked the question what can we do to help, you know, and we're not unique. We're not the only one. A lot of other people do this kind of thing but we said we already finance all these companies that do security resiliency. We defined it very specifically. It's military equipment. It's productive capability. It's APIs, active pharmaceutical ingredients. It's rare earths. It's semiconductors. They could be friend sourced. They don't have to be here as long as they in a safe environment. It's some of the advanced manufacturing where not having here is a strategic mistake. I go on and on. And so we said, what can we do? And that's this initiative and it has two big components. One is the 1.5 trillion over 10 years. Well, I think we'll far exceed that. We've had, and we're doing it not just the United States by the way with a lot of allied nations and that's drones, military, missiles, companies, spin-offs, investments. We hired Todd Combs who's an exceptional investor to make direct investments where people need money to do things which we think are important for resiliency. Resiliency is different to every nation. You know for Europe resiliency includes LNG. They do not have their own LNG supply. They got to get it from us or North Africa and so, but for us, you know, LNG here is not the case so we look at, we try to be very specific about it. The outpouring has been great. We've hired a lot of dedicated people. We're doing special research so, you know, which we didn't really have like the rare earth ecosystem, the ship building ecosystem, the API ecosystem so you can identify where in this very complex chain of stuff that we need intervention to do the right thing and we're probably going to recommend what I call smart industrial policy. You know, I'm reluctant, a lot of my conservative friends. How can you recommend industrial policy? Yes, I don't think government should get involved in a lot of things. It's the only way to solve rare earths, APIs, some of the semiconductor stuff. It could be done where it's not corporations feeding the trough of government. It's got to be consortiums who are doing this to bring stuff back. Rare earth, here's an amazing number. You know how much rare earth we import to United States of America? Only 200 million. You know, if you quadrupled the cost, and there's other stuff we buy which has rare earths in it. So that's not really the only relevant number. If you quadruple the cost, it would mean nothing to the American economy, but we'd be 100% resilient. So if you have to pay more, you know, your car cost might go up 100 bucks, you know, and so and I go on and on and on, but we to have a company succeed here, we got to give them the chance to have economies of scale, build the business, we need competitors in those businesses. And we think there are ways to do it where it's the free market is there and over time it's 100% the free market and, you know, basically you would have a tariff high enough on rare earths that they cannot come from certain countries or just a barrier that we will not import rare earths from China just plain and simple it's unilateral decision to do something like that and we have to do it quick. It is also true if you look back, you know, people ask like what were we doing, we all of us, we were asleep at the switch, folks. You know, 10 or 15 years ago the military, the government, businesses should have said we can't rely on potential adversaries for things critical for our security and so admit it and but if you don't admit mistakes it's hard to fix them so, you know, I don't like the cry over spilled milk, my rule, roll up your sleeves, get it done. We don't have much time, suck it up, move quickly and we need a lot of government proper policy to do this right including what you all hear about permitting and all the stuff you all know about already.

I think there's, you got to go, there is truth to that, but not in everyone. I mean, you should, we should have policy we know works and I can give you a million examples where I think they shouldn't have done it that way or they could have done it another way. I like the fact they're moving quick. I like the fact they're being creative in the Department of War and the Commerce Department, the Treasury Department that I like and they'll morph over time. So, I'm not terrified over that. But there's a right way to do it and the right way to do it is to set up a system that's conducive to getting the right stuff done and probably not picking winners and losers. I can give you examples how it could be done. I just don't want to waste your time with that right now.

Guys, it's everything. It's bridges and roads and homes and affordable housing. It's bureaucracy. It's woke. It's permitting. It's sewer and hookups. It's grids. It is a disgrace. Everyone knows it. Everyone complains about it. Usually when you bring it up, you know, people laugh. That's funny. We, that Baltimore bridge that got knocked down two years ago. Haven't even started it yet. You know, grids. We haven't really begun it yet. I say make America's grids great again. But it's really embarrassing. Oh, I have a great suggestion for the politicians in the room. Ready? I may write an op-ed on this one or you can write it yourselves. Like good policy is free. Take six months in Congress. Do not raise revenues or cut expenses. Don't do any of that. Don't get involved in that debate. Just change policy that makes things better. Housing policy, which I know French Hill's here, permitting policy, which you all know about, local affordable housing policy, education policy. I think it'll drive growth 1% higher just by doing that. Just by doing and we simply don't do it anymore. We simply, we're like Europe. We just layer bureaucratic stupid on top of other bureaucratic stupid stuff. And it doesn't work. And it's demoralizing. If you actually analyze these policies, they hurt the lower income people the most. And so they're all done in the name of good, but they hurt the lower income people the most. And so I think we have to get our act together and hopefully we'll do it.

Affordability. Again, it's not a, you know, it's affordability. That's, of course it's affordability. That's a Democrat issue, Republican issue. The question is how do you get it effectively, you know, and you can have a lot of policies that you think it's making it more affordable you have less supply and so, you know, obviously it's a key thing just all these other things, you know, you can do them right or you can do them wrong and we end up in this binary debate about how you do them but, you know, of course you should make them affordable. It's not a K-shape like one part going up and one part going down. What it really is is that the wealthy, the top 70% are doing fine, the middle class has gotten bigger and richer. They have, you know, stocks have gone up, home prices have gone up, they feel good, they're traveling, their confidence is higher than lower income. It's the bottom 30% where if you look at it over time, their incomes didn't go up for 25 years. Okay? And they're not literally really earning living wages anymore for a whole bunch of reasons I won't go through here. And it used to be if you get up in America and you get even you go to 10th grade, you get out, you get in a factory or somewhere, earn a living wage and soon have a family, have a car, have a house. That's not true anymore and it is incumbent upon all of us to fix that problem. Now that problem, by the way, we've thrown trillions of dollars at it, Democrats and Republicans. And it didn't work. And those people, by the way, when you talk and, you know, we all talk about problems. They have worse crime, worse schools, less affordable housing, worse food. And there are policies that can fix that. And it's not that they're so, their wages have stagnated. They still have jobs, you know, but they're not seeing the opportunity and they're angry about it. And then they see governments wasting tremendous sums of money, you know, picking winners or losers. You know, even my Democratic friends when I ask them, if we gave a trillion dollars to federal government, anyone would be better off. It's just not possible. It would end up in all these special interest groups and it'd be a big potty that they'd give to folks. It's policy. It's education policy. It's housing policy, it's infrastructure policy, it's crime policy, you know, and that stuff works done right. And there are a lot of examples, you know, if you read the Fowles wrote that book when he went to 50 cities, none bigger than Columbus, about, you know, how they're building riverwalks and bringing in businesses and improving their schools. Good policy works and it's got nothing to do in the most part for Democrat and Republican. It's just good policy.

Yeah. And so we, you know, I met with the mayor of Miami the other day and I said everything I wanted to say but, you know, but one of the things I was saying like what does a bank do? And so I walked in the front door. We have a big flag in the headquarters. I salute that flag every morning. I told him I salute that flag every morning. And your parents came here for the same reason my grandparents came here, were Greek, mostly Greek immigrants who never finished high school, for the freedom and justice that this country means and that if you opened up America's borders billions of people would move here to be American, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And so I told him we bank cities, schools, states, hospitals, countries, mortgages, small business and we do the best we can, we make mistakes, we pay people well. We all get medical, dental, Pilates, you know, and so we're good citizens. We pay a lot. We take care of people. And, you know, policy should be done well. So, we announced this other thing called the American Dream Initiative, which is mortgages and affordable housing, helping small businesses, financial education, you know, we have a lot of branches in lower income neighborhoods, teach people how to save money and how to open accounts. Work skills, which we've already talked about, which should have to be done locally. And so we're just doubling down on what we already do and we just set targets for ourselves. Can we do more? And so take small business for example. You know, we bank seven million. We're going to make it 10. I'm convinced we'll get there. You know, we have to gear up for it. We got to hire more people, more branches, get more, you know, small business bankers and things like that. And out of that, we get a lot of ideas that germinate that work. Sometimes they don't always work. And but I just want to point out because it may be the most important thing of all is to reignite the American dream type thing is I remind people that the constitution is a legal document. It's but the principles on which it's based are the most important thing. Those principles and values are freedom of speech, free religion, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. The pursuit of happiness to them did not mean are you happy. It meant have a purpose. You could be an artist, you could be a farmer, you could be a military officer, you could be a caregiver. It meant to make the world a better place to try to create equal opportunity for people. And we don't teach those values anymore. And they are the foundation that made this country great. And we made, and all these schools, I mean, I've looked at them now. You look at some of the colleges and even high schools, they don't teach a lot of American history. And you could say in America those values are still extraordinary why four billion people come here. It doesn't mean we didn't have flaws. I don't know. I've read a lot of history. I haven't read one country that didn't have flaws. Not one. And of course you should acknowledge them and try to fix them if you can. And that's part of the American dream. Fixing the bottom 30%, lifting up everybody, creating equal opportunity. I think that would dramatically reduce polarization and anger which you see all over the place. And so we're doubling down on that too. And we're quite unabashed about it.

Yeah. So, first I'm, when I saw Jeff doing that, I'm saying thank Jeff, God bless you. Get involved in a debate. You know, you might not agree with everything he's saying, but I like the fact he's saying stuff. He cares enough about our country to actually get on there because a lot of people just simply don't do it or even think about it very much. And the tax is very complicated. Okay. So, I generally agree and if you look at the bottom 50%, they don't pay that much anyway. So, you got to be a little careful. Now, they're all different types of taxes. You know, you got your sales tax and you got real estate taxes and that some drive bad behavior and all that and all should be kind of looked at. I like the earned income tax credit which today as it stands if you're a single parent making $14,000 the government gives you seven at the end of the year in a check, you know, some people are entitled to it don't get it. If you have no children they give you like 700 bucks. I would take that the 14,000, I'd make it 12,000, I'd get rid of the child requirement. You're working, you'll go home with 26,000. If you're two parents you have $52,000. And the reason I like it is because first I think it would pay for itself. We know one thing about jobs. They create dignity. That first rung in the ladder. When I hear people making fun of, you know, burger flippers, a lot of those burger flippers end up owning and running McDonald's. They are proud of what they accomplish. You know, a lot of our forefathers came here and that's what they did when they got here. That first rung leads to a second rung. Jobs lead to, the money would go to the person. So it's not big government design whether you can buy potato chips and soda or not. They would spend it on their families and their homes. They spend it locally. It might foster local restaurants. They might buy more insurance or a tutor for the kids or something like that. And it would lift up those economies, but it also has the great virtue of bringing people into the workforce, making work pay more. And we know one thing about jobs, better social outcome, more household formation, less crime, less suicide, less recidivism. So, if you actually did the full analysis, which is hard to do, and we really haven't, I guarantee it would more than pay for itself. And that would cost like another $50 billion. If they did that, yeah, I think people would be willing to pay as long as it went to them. If it's going to go to Congress to decide who to give it to, no one's going to want to pay extra money in taxes.

Oh yeah, I'm not sure that's true. So first of all high quality guy, experienced, knows markets, was at the central bank, he was at the New York Fed when we were going through the great financial crisis. It's a fresh look. I think it's good. I like his views. I mean the Federal Reserve did in fact get involved in a lot of stuff that they should not have in my view and they're independent on monetary policy they're not independent on regulatory policy and when they did regulatory policy, they violated the constitution. There were no cost-benefit studies, no analysis, no stuff they're supposed to do. And, you know, that was wrong. You know, I'm not, and I like Jay Powell, too. I'm not just saying that. When I look at my own institution, I often say the same thing. You know what? In hindsight, we shouldn't have done that. And so, I think they should take a fresh look. They were the adults in the town. They still are, but they're better off looking to financial system. Let the OCC do more regular banks. Reduce all this. You know, they were getting into climate and DEI and stuff like that. We've been adding year after year after year. You wouldn't know this, rules and regulations on top of rules and regulations. I think you can make the system safer and let banks what they're supposed to do, make more loans, create more liquidity, have more intervention in the markets by the people who should do it. The Fed put themselves in a position where you have any kerfuffle, they have to do something. I think that's a huge mistake. So, I think he's right about relooking at that. And I think he's right about reducing the size of their balance sheet. You know, we had too much QE and we still don't fully know the effect of $10 trillion of borrowing and $8 trillion of QE and I'm not sure those things play out over a year or 12 months or even a 5-year period. To reduce the size of the balance sheet, he's got to change some of these requirements. My view when we talk about regulations is we should talk about better. I think you can let banks lend more, create more liquidity, and make them safer. I'd be much tougher in certain rules. I think it'd be much easier than other ones, but, you know, the way it works out there is every rule is important as if it's the only rule that's going to save a bank from failing. And so, I think he'll do a good job. Now, I don't think it's in the market what he could do because remember, he's one person. He's walking in a room probably right now. There are 12 people at the table. They're smart people. They're mostly economists. And they're going to say, you know, Kevin, we'd like to hear your ideas and let's think about it. Let's review these things. So, it's going to take study. They're going to take time. So my view is there's almost no chance he can actually change anything in six months and he needs the time. So in the meantime, the environment changed that he's entering into. You know, we have more inflation. So we'll see. And he's, you know, he's smart. He's got to figure out how he wants to navigate the environment and the new Fed governors.

You know, so when the Fed says data, you always, I think, of course they're data dependent and, you know, in some ways they're a fast follower. When inflation went up they raised rates. You know, sometimes they look at what they think future data might be and they can act anticipatory, very hard to do but they have done that. Nick, you know, it's like if the government's going to spend another trillion dollars they can act in anticipation of that, they think it's going to be another trillion, something like that. So I think the inflationary forces out there are more than other people think. And I'm not saying it's going to go dramatically up. I don't know. It is ticking up. You can put Iran in there and food. Healthcare is going up for us. It's going up 10% a year. And we think it's going to happen this year and next year by the way. But it's, you know, the remilitarization of the world is kind of inflationary. AI spending in the short run is inflationary. Restructuring of trade fundamentally has an inflationary component. Restriction of immigration has an inflationary component. $2 trillion dollars of spending. You know, the economists tell me, well, no, it's two trillion last year, it's two trillion this year. It's not inflationary. I don't agree with that. I think that there's a cumulative effect of spending all this money, which may have the, that will cause future inflation a way we do not understand. So, the notion that somehow that we spent all this money and it's fine. I think we are too comfortable. That's true. I just, so I look at this long list of stuff and obviously oil prices and food prices. So, you know, I hope it doesn't go up much. But, you know, talking about interest rates, the 10-year bond is set by the market. It's at 4.5%. That may be the right equilibrium right today based on what people know. But remember, equilibrium prices and what happens are two different things. And if you had inflation at 2%, you know, the short rate should be three and a half. So, the notion you could take the short rate down a lot when inflation is more like 3.5% or 4%, I think it easily hit 4%, you know, later this year. So, you know, we'll see. Hopefully, it'll be okay and manageable, but if you read history books, that isn't always the case.

You know, look, I view the market as exuberant. You know, and I've seen this before. You know, of course, exuberance can go on a long time and it's not bad. Sometimes, you know, earnings are up 15-20% this year and a lot of these companies have huge order books. So, it may be justified. But, you know, there is also hype in some of the stuff. You see hype in other commodities too. And then credit spreads are very low. So, I look at all that as actually a risk. So, it makes you feel good, but if something goes wrong, those asset prices can come down. Interest rates are gravity to asset prices. So, you know, it's a risk. I'm not terrified about it. We can handle whatever it is. We look at risk. We look at the range of potential outcomes that can handle it. So, JP Morgan can handle rates at 2%, rates at 8%. We're not betting our company either one. And I can give you probabilities of those things, but which is more of an intellectual exercise than anything else. And so we'll see.

Well, you know, I visited SpaceX. It's extraordinary. I mean the company, you could talk about values and all that but which I can't, it's extraordinary. It's extraordinary what they've done. I think it was 100 launches last year, you know, the reusable parts now so the cost per launch, the cost per satellite is literally coming down like this. So I wish these guys and Blue Origin, I wish them the best. I mean they're inventing stuff that can, you know, change humanity for the better.

In general I put that all in the minor category, okay, just so you know. I mean you guys are going to buy or not buy, you can look at that stuff, you can decide it makes sense. You know, I always think corporate governance should be done right and so when you look at some of these things and you got to say what's fair, what's fair to you if you're a buyer or a partner of mine or an investor in a company how would you treat it. But right now markets are wide open, you know, the M&A markets are booming, equity markets are booming. I but I do remind people, you know, and debt markets relating to M&A are booming. You know, so debt markets there's a certain amount we just constantly refine, there's also amount that's episodic is based on M&A type of activity but, you know, ECM is kind of the tip of the spear here and if you look at ECM it can close and open pretty quickly. I mean I forgot in 2022 we had 400 IPOs in America and the next year we had 20. I mean it was as dramatic like that. So those, that is often based on sentiment, short-term values, you know, the specific stocks themselves.

The geopolitics of how the free world, how this plays out in the next 20 years.

It's not about cryptocurrencies. We're one of the biggest users of blockchain. I think blockchains, we've been talking about for 15 years. Okay, we're still talking about it. I do think it'll replace financial market infrastructure. We have a JP Morgan deposit coin. We can already move money 24/7. But I do think, you know, when crypto folks point out the weaknesses they're right. You know, there are a lot of changes they can make it better. Fed wire could be, you know, the Fed wire is five days a week and 10 hours a day, it could be why not six days a week, 20 hours a day and real-time payments have a huge benefit for people, all true. Cross-border costs too much and we will be part of fixing that. And I'm not that worried about stable coins. I've all I've ever said about that if you have them they should have the same rules and regulations as AML, BSA, KYC, you know, insurance, disclosures, liquidity, transparency, social requirements, which we have. You know, just a level playing field is all we're asking, that kind of thing. I do think it'll change some of that stuff. Not worried about it.

I'm shocked that people get shocked. I just don't understand it. We have a lot of excess capital. We've always been very clear that we've deferred deploying it in our business. I do believe we can do that. I can't do it all at once, but we earn very good returns and we're going to deploy it serving clients around the world the way we serve clients today in payments and asset management and capital raising. Of course, we should be thinking about acquisitions. Can you imagine, I don't have one in mind, but I was thinking this morning about buying you guys, Versant. You know, you look cheap to me and, you know, and we probably, we would probably pay the talent more than you're paid by them, just so you know. But yeah, there might be something out there. But you, and the other thing as a management tool, you always get smart just by looking and thinking why are people doing things? Why are a lot of people doing better than us in a lot of areas. So when we have our management meetings, you can imagine I don't focus on my god, we're number one in X. I focus on why are we number four in Germany in this? Why didn't we build Stripe? Why didn't we have a better market making system like Citadel? Why, you know, why can't I want Chase UK to be like Revolut which is worth $75 billion? Can we do that? What are our strengths? What are our weaknesses? And so we should always be and look at acquisitions. I love the fact we can do organic growth. It's hard, banker by banker, branch by branch, system by system, country by country, client base by client segment. That's what we do. And I think we have huge opportunities, but, you know, inorganic, which is hard. I've done tons in my life, but you should always be thinking, is there something that can really enhance your businesses?

You're talking about bureaucracy?

Oh, cockroach credit.

I don't think private credit is 1.7 trillion. Bank syndicated, leverage line is 1.7 trillion. High yield is 1.7 trillion. Investment grade is 15 trillion. I mean those are 1.7 trillion. Investment grade is 15 trillion. Mortgages is like 13 trillion. It's not systemic. I do think when we have a credit cycle because there have been weakening standards in underwriting and transparency and marking. I do think you'll see credit perform worse than people expect. That's all. I don't think it's systemic. I think there will be people in private credit and there'll probably be people in banks who do far worse than the average. That's happened in every credit cycle and then people be yelling and screaming. I think if you, and so I'm not worried about it and we bank them, you know, we do a lot of business with them mostly because it's arbitrage related type of stuff which I object to but we do it too for a whole bunch of different reasons and I think when I told the regulators when you have a lot of arbitrage taking place it should open your eyes and it often leads to problems down the road. So not worried about it. We'll see.

You know, I look, I grew up and I'm sure a lot of people had the same thing where, you know, the values were have a purpose in life and, you know, my brother's a teacher, my other brother was a physicist. My dad was a stock broker. I read Graham and Dodd, the big thick one, when I was like 17 years old. But there was no push, but it was also work hard, do the best you can, make the world a better place, don't allow bullies, treat them with respect, and all I want my legacy at least relating, and my family is the most important. My country, my family is the most important, you know, that love and respect and what I give and get, that's the most important. I now have eight grandkids, three lovely kids and a wonderful wife, and I'm lucky, you know, and I count my blessings for that. My wife would say I don't thank her as much as I should. But that's number one. My country is number two, bar none. I'm deeply devoted to helping fix these problems, whatever it takes kind of thing in my view. But for the company it's just, I just want that gravestone to say, you know, when people visit that we're better off for that son of a gun.