Do not design great policies
I pointed out in a previous post that a banker has silver in their hair, gold in their teeth and lead in their ass. That’s cute but maybe way off the mark because sometimes I wonder if bankers deserve that much credit.
I’m surprised by these self-serving, trite and confusing remarks (perhaps I’m cynical and harsh) made in Davos by Jamie Dimon, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the renowned JP Morgan Chase and Company.
MR. DIMON: Thank you very much. First of all, I also appreciate being invited to Davos. And I was once asked, you know, what’s the most important thing to you personally, not as a corporate executive, and I answered that humanity is obviously the most important. So I really applaud Madame Secretary, Tony Blair, Henry Kissinger, for the work they’ve done, you know, trying to make this a better world, which I think is the most important thing we do.
You know, as a corporate executive, one of the things that I think most – I think I probably speak for most corporations here – they really do try hard to be great corporate citizens, whether it’s, you know, helping the disabled or getting jobs or the homeless or charities or after catastrophes being helpful. And climate change – I won’t go through a lot of it, but in terms of investing in technology, building green buildings, testing green branches.
But one of the things that is – I just think is so important it that – that’s helped this world a lot is globalization. And globalization itself is being attacked from the left, it’s being attacked from the right, and there are legitimate concerns and some legitimate losers in globalization that, you know, we should thoughtfully think about and talk about.
But if you talk about the poverty, you know, most economists say the last 20-30 years globalization has taken something like 2 billion people out of poverty. And this also brought the world closer. You know, most of us now – you know, a lot of people travel around the world. They have friends around the world. It’s made a big difference.
So I just urge that we continue to work not just as corporations but as individuals on things like globalization. And I think, Klaus, like you said, they are things that take collaboration, that it’s not going to be determined by, you know, a corporation or just even one country.
And the other – one last point is that there’s good policy and bad policy, and you know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions There are a lot of people, I always hear, have these fabulous values – which I believe in the values – but I think their policies may very well have the opposite effect. And so we have to be very careful at designing great policies.