Dimon’s Dilemma

By Ted Dieck | Recruiter’s View - Business Climate - Economy - Energy - ESG | Oct 24, 2022

Jamie Dimon has taken two conflicting positions.  Which ever way he resolves his situation, he’ll likely influence others to do the same.

Jamie Dimon is the highly visible Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of JPMorgan Chase.  Without question, he is leading the largest bank in the United States. 

Banned In West Virginia 

We mentioned JPMorgan Chase on August 4.  It was just days after West Virginia Treasurer Riley Moore put the bank at the top of his Restricted Financial Institution List.  See Miners Dig-In Against ESG

The list barred six major ESG lenders from bidding on $18 billion of state contracts.
JPMorgan Chase was one of them. 

As Moore explained, “…we generate hundreds of millions in tax revenue from coal and gas specifically, and now I’m going to hand those dollars over to a financial institution that wants to end those industries. That’s a clear conflict of interest. We want to do business with folks who want to do business with us.”

Push-Back Against ESG

Here’s my best explanation of how ESG destroys food, fuel, and entire countries…
On TILT: Anyone On ESG

Clearly, ESG puts lenders in a position to cut off finances and crush any industry, company, or individual that they find offensive.  

And they are doing that.  It is so ominous that, in addition to West Virginia, another 14 states have threatened to boycott ESG lenders.  Their combined impact could block more than $600 billion of financial services business. 

Woke Bankers

There’s good reason for concern.  The JPMorgan Chase website is dripping with ESG, DEI, and Climate Change initiatives.  They even have a Global Head of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. 

Just focus, for a minute, on that title.  See the word “Equity?”  

JPM trades on the NYSE, so you would be forgiven for thinking that this financial institution thinks equity means stocks.  

But with today’s twisted word games, equity means equal outcome. 

The equality that this country was founded on allowed people a fair shot at making something of themselves.  Equity, however, is not equality.  

Equity represents the communist promise that everyone will get the same result, no matter what.  That’s a whole different deal. 

Judging by the JPM website, credit worthiness is adjusted by gender, skin pigment, and whether you have a windmill in your backyard. 

But it doesn’t stop there.  In its Mission Statement, JPMorgan Chase states that it is driving its values throughout its own company and out into its suppliers.  

That’s right, if you want to sell to JPM, maybe you should look like one of the pictures on their website. 

Did Jamie Dimon Blink?

As I said earlier, Jamie Dimon is a highly visible guy.  He’s powerful, public, and well practiced at delivering his message.  

I’ve checked a number of recent sources, and (in his own, very smooth way) he consistently made these points… 

  • America and the Western World had best get their acts together, now.
  • This is a war.
  • The US should have been pumping oil long ago. 

For your reference, one of the best write-ups is this OCT 14 ZeroHedge article. 

It includes these statements attributed to Jamie Dimon… 

  • He predicted a US recession in “6 to 9” months
    (Which is strange.  I thought we were already in a recession.)
  • JPMorgan is sitting on $1.2 trillion in cash
  • And, yes… He also said it’s “time to stop going hat in hand to Venezuela and Saudi and start pumping more oil & gas in the USA.”

You have doubtless noticed that the same guy who wants more Oil & Gas is in trouble with West Virginia and 14 other states because he won’t back off ESG policies that hate fossil fuels like Oil & Gas. 

Well, brace yourself.
Mr. Smooth Talker also had an answer for that… 

“Investors don’t give a shit” about ESG. 

OK, then.  No confusion there. 

Recruiter’s View 

Jamie Dimon has an interesting decision to make.

He can’t be for Oil & Gas and against it at the same time. 

He knows a terrible recession is building, and the energy shortage started it.  He has stashed over a trillion dollars at JPM to fight the crisis he helped create. 

Perhaps sometime around NOV 8, Jamie Dimon will take a look at the mid-term election results and decide that “saving the planet” and “racial equity” won’t be the hills to die on. 

He’s got serious real-world threats in his face, right now. 

If he drops the social engineering themes and backs production, maybe (just maybe) other leaders will do the same. 

-TD