Jamie Dimon on Iran, Trump and why he’s optimistic about AI | NPR’s Newsmakers

sister program NPR's Newsmakers. In each episode, we interview some of the most influential people of our time. You can watch the show in NPR's YouTube channel or search for it wherever you get your podcasts. Jamie Diamond is the CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase, this nation's largest bank.

He's also connected to many of the wealthy and powerful in New York and here in Washington,

where we spoke with Diamond and the J.P. Morgan offices on the occasion of an annual letter in which he gives his opinions about almost everything. Thanks for welcoming us here. It's good to be here. Thank you.

Thank you for coming here. And I read your letter. It's really compelling. Absolutely. Just yeah, absolutely.

Every page. It is more interesting than the average corporate document because you have opinions on many topics. And that's my first question.

“Why do you feel you should as a CEO be speaking out on topics all across the news when”

you probably could stay silent? Yeah. So it's very important. When I do these letters, I think to myself, what's important to the company, what's important to employees, what's important to our shareholders.

I actually make a list of questions, talk to people. I want to answer the big and important questions. And the thing you're asking about is about the company, but the last section, which

is about America and the world, I always say it's predicated on the fact that if America doesn't

do well, JPMorgan will have a real hard time doing well. And that we have a deep interest in that. And the second reason is that, you know, policy, we shouldn't, I'm not saying the government can't do it. We shouldn't rely on government alone.

Collaboration works. Yeah. Collaboration works in Detroit, it worked in World War II, it worked in all these things. So I think it's good for business to get involved, to bring your expertise, to bear to help all the citizens of the country.

And that helps the country and your company. Do you assume that the interests of the country are about the same as the interests of your company? No.

“But I think that we have common interests, so that, you know, we all, if all of our citizens”

do better, we'll all do better. I think a lot of people come to Washington tons of special interest groups. I think they're like 17,000 live in organizations, and they're all fight-film stuff. I'm kind of more in the camp that we show to fight, which good for the country. The country grew faster, we don't be better off.

And people talk about polarization and things that don't work, I also think it is our job to lift up our citizens. That is what we should do. We should be civic-minded, not just, you know, about ourselves, and so, and banks have been doing that for years.

If you go to, actually a lot of companies have been doing that for years. As part of just the normal culture, sometimes it's local, sometimes it's national. The business roundtable here gets involved in public policy that's good for the country. Not the public policy is good for banks, or private equity, or chemical companies, or pharmaceutical companies, or movie companies.

And I think we need to do more of that, which is good for the country. One of many things you comment on is the war in Iran. You talk about geopolitical risk. It's right up there. I know that you've said in recent days that you approved generally of the idea of the war,

to attack a threat in Iran. I'd like to know, though, what you think of the President's leadership in the war, and particularly his recent threats to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age. Yeah, I'm not going to comment on that, but I'm more of a position to broader context.

The most important thing that we can do is make sure that the world is safe for democracy.

And it's being challenged today in Ukraine, Iran, North Korea, somewhat by China.

“I think that is probably the most critical issue of what world are we going to have next”

40th years. This is a part of that. I'm not supporting it, I'm not supporting it, but I pointed out my letters, you know, people talk about being an imminent threat. It's not a threat.

They've been killing and murdering innocent people, including innocent Americans, you know, for 47 years. They have ballistic missiles that can go 3,000 miles, and they clearly have trying to develop nuclear capability. I agree with the concept, they can't be allowed to have nuclear capability.

And so that's what I'm saying. I'm not an expert in it. I don't know all the choice they have, I know the military is exceptional. I don't know what their plan B, their plan C is, I'm simply pointing out that it's, you got to look at that risk of being an enormous risk for mankind.

And so, so I want, I hope we prevail. So, and I know it causes other problems in society and, you know, the court of fuel, of course well, I completely understand that I'm quite sympathetic to that. But this is a really important subject that has to be properly dealt with eventually. What are the economic risks, which is your area of expertise of the potential destruction

of this war? As we're talking, the President has just had a press conference and talked about destroying Iranian power plants, the Iranians have talked about destroying infrastructure in response. But the economic blast radius could even be bigger than it has been. Yeah, no, so again, I'm simply in morality from some of the economics, I think the morality

may be more important than free and safe world, maybe more important and that's hard to understand. We did that in World War II. You could pay for minutes sacrifices, but economically, you know, there's tons of uncertainty

help call it.

Obviously it has up in some form of recession, you know, recession is unemployment, it could

be stackflation, recession is the worst, it could be, you know, it could be short. I don't know, it may not happen at all, so I'm saying it's going to happen, I just think it increased the odds of bad economic outcomes and we just be clear-eyed about that. To be clear-eyed is there's some way to measure the economic damage of this war so far.

“I think the best way to look at it so far is that, you know, people here pay more”

for gas and might not pay more for food and, um, but if ends up in the right place, you know, you have to look at that quite carefully, so I don't know yet. You don't know yet. I don't know yet. Do you have in mind a worst case scenario and a best case scenario?

I think the worst case is that somehow we don't get control of the streets and removes that, that we have to back out, that oil and gas that Iran doesn't give up and oil and gas prices go even higher today, that's probably the worst case scenario and

the best case is that they, that they negotiate something where they don't build nuclear

weapons, the streets where her moods is opened up and we go back to a more peaceful world. Listening to your worst case, I think I hear you saying as a citizen, the United States has to win this. That losing it would be, I don't want to go that far because you're that's putting words by mouth.

I don't know what all the potential outcomes are and neither do you, okay? So fair enough. But we all, after the fact would be having strong opinions in hindsight, even hindsight is not perfect. I say even in hindsight, you don't know history, I point out my love that we still analyze

what happened in World War I without it out, without it out. There's a thing that's happening in real time that's particularly interesting and that relates to the financial markets. The president regularly has made statements about this war and other issues that have moved the markets.

Now that's normal, you've been around a long time, every president moves the markets. But they've been quite sudden, quite frequent, quite dramatic, and sometimes there is a news suggesting that someone profited in the moments when that happened. What do you think about when you watch that?

“I think I have to deal with the world I got, so I don't spend that much time worrying about”

it. I think if people are profiting that's bad, I think when the president changes his mind,

I don't think there's always a bad thing.

You know, he wants to do extra stuff to work that way, he tries something different. That's okay. So I don't look at that as a terrible, terrible thing. And I think they've learned, you know, he was president years ago, he's president, I think they've learned what works and what doesn't work, and so I hope he does works, you know,

some of that causes a confusion. And in fact, this great lesson, if those you look at the market, like you can see that words of a president are matter. And you know, presidents are careful, this president's less careful, he's also willing to stand up there to take questions and change his mind.

What do you think about people who are either profiting in those moments or frantically buying and selling based on whatever the president just said? I don't know. So profiting illegally should be against the law. You know, I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't trust any inside information that you train

on. Really train insecurities, the train to prediction markets, we told our people, that is against the law. It's certainly against JP Morgan policy. You know, people just speculate and they've got that's different.

That's just some form of gambling and I defend your right to gamble. You say in this letter and you've said elsewhere, the fact that the United States remains the safest investment of the world, especially in tough times. That seems true to this day. And yet at the same time, I as a layman of observed that the interest rate that is charged

on U.S. Treasury bonds has gone up and up several percentage points in the last few years.

“Are we collectively doing something that erodes confidence in the United States?”

Yeah, again, I want to personal bit of context and I really do mean about to say to your listener, viewer, if we opened up our borders, billions of people move here, they want to be American, they want to be American because the values of America. And if you, if you said, I also mean the truth, you can only invest all your money in one country.

And that's true for anyone around the world, what country would it be? This country is defended by the Atlantic of Pacific, our military, the rule of law, our courts are unbelievably innovative system, it doesn't mean it doesn't have flaws. So when interest rates are going up, generally there's two, I hate to over-generalize, but it's because some people think they're inflation rate pressures and are some deficits

bending oil gas to pay how long this world goes on. If you end quickly, you know, that can adjust rather quickly. And then also deficit financing, you know, we have a lot of deficit financing and I think the world looks that and, you know, questions it and then the whole world is doing it by the way.

You know, our deficit actually happens to be the largest in the world, like 6% of GDP. And we're going to eventually have to deal with that. I don't know if that's going to be your problem, but I think those are the reasons you have, you know, the, the 10 year raise going up. One of the risks if we don't deal with the federal, and we're talking here just for the,

than the layman, so, you know, the best way to deal with that problem is to actually deal with the problem, to acknowledge it, to work on it, you know, years ago, we had a solution, the Simpson Balls Commission, it didn't get done. I wish it had gone done, it would have been a home run for all of Americans and it would have resolved some issues.

“So, we have 60% of our spending, I think our spending is like 6%, it's almost 4 trillion”

dollars is set in stone, you know, it's Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, I think we should work on it. And don't know, and again, I don't think anyone can predict, does it become a real problem in six months, six years? I don't know, I do know it will become a problem.

And the way we're, exhibit itself is volatile markets, rates going up, you know, they're kind of the bond vision line, these, the people not wanted by, United States, Treasury still will still be the best economy, but they'll be not one of the only U.S. treasuries, so we should deal with the sooner than better, or sooner than later. Maybe.

Yeah, if it gets done that way, it'll be kind of crisis management, which we'll get through it. It's just not the right way to do it. Maybe you're partly answering that question. When are we going to know when we borrowed too much, when we've gone beyond the point

of no return. Usually, rage is going up and volatility in the marketplace.

You come to Washington a lot, you talk with a lot of powerful people.

It seems to me as a layman that people, when they're out of power are concerned about deficits and when they're in power, they seem to be concerned about deficits. I need this truth to that. I mean, this hasn't, need the Democrats for Republicans to really focus this for a while. It comes up all the time, and you talk, and you walk, the whole is a Congress, I mean,

almost everyone knows it's just we haven't had the will yet to actually deal with it, and it's unfortunate because it can end up with the real problem. We're just going to know what otherwise we've been. Good policy is free, and if we grew with 3%, and not 2%, that number debt to deficit was, the deficit started going down, and the debt to GDP was starting going down, and yet we're saying

“if the economy grew with 3%, I think if we had good policy, which I mentioned in my letter with”

that might be education and immigration and certain regulations, so we could go with 3%, we should aspire to 3%, we could do probably even better than that. You know, this is the most innovative nation the world's ever seen, and so I think we should focus a little bit in that to solve the problem too, not just raise taxes or cut expenditures. I want to ask about another kind of borrowing by private companies, five giant tech firms

that are called the hyper-scalers, they're building out data centers and other things for more and

more AI. You note in your letter, they borrowed $450 billion last year.

They're borrowing $750 billion this year. When would we know when that is too much, and leading to a crisis? Yes, it's hard to tell, so we've had huge investors like that before. This may be the largest ever, if you compare it, some of our concepts have done that to other interstate highway program and internet or electricity on roads and the-- These are fast. Now the total capbacks in the country is like two and a half trillion.

So it's a big part of that, it's not unbelievable, capital expenditures. Capital expenditures, how much companies invest in the United States, and so I don't know. I don't look, if you look at AI in total, okay, but I can know who all the winners are, how much is too much, we might overspend a little bit, but AI itself has huge potential, and the use of it is going

“up very quickly, very dramatically, and the greater context of stuff, and I think it's as important”

for the younger viewers here, I think it's going to cure certain cancers. I think it'll save a lot of people, you know, highway deaths. I think it's going to come with composite materials and make plain safer. It may come up with solutions for pollution and climate, so that is the good thing, and it may reduce the workweek, you know, 20, 30, 40 years from now. So there's good things, you can also focus on the potential negative ones. There's both. It's not just one.

Of those things you mentioned, the most interesting one to me was your suggestion that we might have a three and a half day workweek someday. Yeah. As opposed to firing a lot of people, which is the other scenario that people would work less and maybe still be paid or paid the same amount or paid more. But the firing scenario seems like the most obvious one to a lot of people. What makes you think the shorter workweek would be the way that companies work? I wouldn't make

that the solution. I think that people are going to adopt AI to do better job with the customers, and if it does a better job for the GDP, the country will grow. I think the risk you're talking about is that, and there are a lot of jobs out there today, okay? Well-paying blue college jobs, well-paying white college, which are open, cyber, NAI, and welding, and electric, and all things like that. So I think the question we should ask is, and most of the major technology innovations

came in slowly. It took 10, 15, 20 years for cars, and electricity, and even the internet. The internet and total paid off. It's just, you don't know who the winners and who it was worth, but it didn't change jobs that much. If, and I'm saying, if this changes jobs too much,

here's what we all should do. We in government, business in government, relocate, income assistance,

The system will adjust eventually. I just think, if you look at the history of developed nations,

“we went from working six and a half days a week, to six days a week, to five and a half days a week,”

to five days a week, to 12 hours a day, to 10 hours a day, to 10 hours a day. I do think that this is a good chance to be three and a half days a week, and in many years there'll be living wonderful lives. And you could say that on Europe already working for days or weeks, what do you think about when somebody says, on NPR as they did the other day, one of the risks here, one of the goals here is to replace almost everybody's job. I don't like that. I don't think

that's going to happen, and there are a lot of jobs that are not replaceable, and you're going to wake up in the morning, you're still going to have to eat something and then go somewhere and go hiking and talk to people and need shrinks and other tons of jobs. I mean, I just, and even to build these data centers, you're talking about tons of labor, engineers, people who are building this stuff, cement, steel, servers, so there's a lot of jobs. The building holds towns next

to new data centers. And this, this will adjust over time. They really question, if it goes too fast, to have the adjustment we had in prior large technological advances, that's the real question. And we start to really think about which society should do to do about that if it happens. Is AI going to eliminate a lot of entry-level jobs? I don't know yet. I don't know because we're still going to need people who've been clients. So, you know, we may very well do a change

what that entry-level job is. You know, a lot of those entry-level jobs are a lot of paperwork. Sure. They'll be eliminated. And you can say, well, then you can do a less people, maybe, but I also need those people to call in clients. So, that job may change, you know, the job may IBM is doing something really neat. They're hiring as many young people, but a lot more than the more AI experts. They've been using AI kind of the AI native. They started with AI. So,

there may be jobs that were doing so they can train people. And one day they can go, you know, be the client exact, you know, covering a large global client. There's something like that happening

at JP Morgan. A little bit. We've always done where I call be deployment. You know, we've always

been, you know, jobs that were going up and going down. We always say, hey Steve, we really like you, you know, here's some a whole bunch of other jobs. You know, sometimes there's no fit or you don't want to, you want to retire. But other times, yeah, we re-trained you moved to another job. So, there were people in our branches who were in the mortgage business. There were people in the mortgage business who used to be in the branches. There were people wanting to do different things. And

so one of the things that Jay Morgan do with Bill is what for you with great opportunities in life.

“You know, in the United States, sometimes around the world. And I think people, the next generation”

will probably have a lot more jobs, changes in their career than we've had in ours. There is a line in your letter that I want to try to decipher for someone like me. I think you're telling me that asset prices, things like stocks and real estate and so forth are grossly overpriced. The actual language is that they're more valuable relative to the economy than they were before the 2008 financial crisis. So, what's happening? Yeah, there are a lot of ways to measure asset prices.

So, you know, one is P.E.A. should price earnings ratios. Yeah. That is the total warm buffets favorite one is a total value of stocks to the GDP. I put something like that in my letter. Yeah. What I said is they're at the hot. They're not as high as they've ever been. But they're in that upper 15% or something like that. And then credit spreads for debt are kind of low. They're not the lowest they've ever been. So, what I'm pointing out is that that is not in

and of itself bad. But it creates a risk of things go south. That's what I'm pointing out that, you know, you can have a quick or judgment asset prices. Do I need to be prepared for my pension

“fund or my home value? I think you should always be intelligent invested. I mean, you know,”

if you're 100% in stocks, I'd say, yeah, you should have something in something more concerned. I'm a little more concerned. I have short-term investments and obviously, I have a lot of

Jake and Morgan. But you should always be thoughtful about how you invest your money. And you should

always not assume it's going to go up forever or go down forever. People make mistakes and they overreact and they overconcentrate, you know, like, by five stocks. Yeah. So, you also say cities need to compete. Yeah. And you've said this before, but what is distinct here is the two name exactly one city. Yeah. It's your hometown, New York City. Yeah. And you talk about their high tax rates. What if anything is your message to your mayor? Yeah. So, around my dining.

Yeah, it wasn't meant just for him. He was answering a question. I get asked by a lot of people. You know, when we just built a new headquarters there, which is January, and we tried to take very good care of our people. Individuals compete. Cities compete. Companies compete. Country's compete. That is not me guessing. That is the truth. When I grew up, when I was younger, you know, Singapore is a great city. London was in a great city. You know, Nashville was in a great city.

Detroit was and I was reminded that in New York City, 60 of the Fortune 500, 120, 60 left in the

some wonderful, and if I was at any mayor, I'd make a list of strains and weaknesses. You know, it's got artists, it's got Broadway, it's got restaurants, it's got, you know, it's a melting pot, it's got brains, it's got financial, it's got media, all great. It also has a highest individual rates, the highest corporate rates, the highest estate tax rates. And that tends to drive people

“out if you want to be competitive. So, it's people vote their feet. And then I point out,”

in there, that this happened before, it's happened to other cities, it's happened to California in general today. And that's not because that's not a moral statement. That's an actual, what's actually happened and why is it happening. And so, you know, that's what people should do with think about those things. And any mayor should think about how you fix that. And most of it mayors that they worry about is sanitation, crime, schools, hospitals, things like that that make

living standards better for the people of the city. Have you spoken, rather than opportunity to speak with Mayor Mombani about this, I want to raise taxes further. Yeah, I'd let him do the ones. I mean, he can try. He can do it every one, whatever, he's right. So, I'm not going to worry about it. I mean, he's saying, hello to you, it is he reached out. I have not. I spoke to him right if he got elected, you know, if you, if you want to call me, I'd be happy to help figure out how

we can do things. It doesn't mean I'm going to agree with him. But I'm interested in what you think of the results so far in that Mombani has not raised taxes. He's certainly tried. He just hasn't gotten it done yet. But it seems that services are getting done, there are all kinds of stories about pot holes being filled. How's he doing? I don't know yet. I'm going to reserve my judgment in that. And I just do also, I want to point out, my real loyalty to my country, not to my city.

Okay, so I'm a new worker by birth, I'm a Yankee fan. But I'm not going to do bad things for my country because of my city. I just might be a little careful that I could very well be able to say, how come you're not more loyal? There's a lot of reasons. I'm much more loyal to my country. You also point out that you now as a company have more employees and Texas than in New York. Yeah, but be wine. Because there is hugely hospitable. And you know, Florida is going,

now you see a lot of people moving to Texas and Florida, both individuals and companies. And

so Texas is, it's your melting pot. Tag when I first started working in Texas, it didn't have

opera, it didn't have the rest of us. It has today. It didn't have, you know, it's got some wonderful universities. And then it's conducive to the business. The mayor calls it up. They need a big plot of land. They'll change the bust lines for you. They do a whole bunch of things. And I think their tax rates are very low, both corporate and individual. So people want to work

“there. And so that's why could you envision your company doing as Elon Musk's has and relocating”

the headquarters to Texas? I would do whatever's right for my company. You would abandon that tower. I would do whatever's right for my company. I'm not sure how to abandon the tower. I'm just saying, I don't think our headcount are going to, you know, debt dramatically that we wouldn't fill that tower. But, you know, couldn't 10 or 15 years. You know, people bad things happen. I mean, you know, we had, you know, I remember, you know, Detroit doesn't plan to 25% you know, the

population went from 2 million to 7000. You know, and again, and that's new mayor has done an

unbelievable job. Mayor Duggen, you know, what he did to save that city is extraordinary. And it was all collaboration, business, civic society, schools, teaching people, advanced manufacturing, getting anyone who can help them. It should be studied. They should write case studies about it. He turned the city by that attitude. That's running for a governor of Michigan and an independent ticker. You recently put out a thing about the American dream. Yeah, saying that your company wanted to support that. I don't

want to make you talk all about it again, but it's everything from home ownership to improving health care. But I'd like a basic definition from you. Yeah. What is it? What is the American dream? Yeah, and also point out to kind of a universal dream, home ownership, health, jobs, skills, wages, less crime, that's the American dream. That's for the dream for most big of a good life, you know,

and a safe life. And so, and we've always been, finance in the American dream, small business,

formation, they're 30 million small businesses in this country. We banked 7 million. So fortunately in

“that, and the reason it's so important is that it has sprayed for a lot of people. And I think it's wrong.”

I mean, I think it's part of our job to say, what did we do wrong? You know, a third of the population of 25 percent, their wages effectively didn't go up like everybody else is for years. And almost for 15 to 20 years to pin how you look at it. And a lot of those folks also go to neighborhoods where their schools don't work. So most of the people, a lot of neighbors, their schools work fine. Their neighbors have more crime. They have more less social outcome. So what do you do? And so

I try to be, is here's what we are going to do. Here's what we're going to do for small business, but I give three really important suggestions there. Okay. One is schools. I think schools should be a value everywhere. But high schools, community colleges and even colleges, an outcome, an outcome being what job do you get and kind of what does it pay? And because you could teach

for them, I give them jacks and ice queens, their kids go to aviation high school, high school,

they teach you high school, they also teach you how to maintain a certain aircraft. They travel sometimes one of two hours each way by subway, their mom and dad's wanting to go. And they've been out of maintain their truck system, electrical system, the engine system, it says 95% graduate,

“making 75,000 plus a year, they could be 17 years old. That's what they should be doing.”

So way, way back, when a school taught you how to read and write, that kind of was the ticket. So now it's not, you know, we have to, and there's schools in cyber and aviation and program management, hotel administration, tons of these things that people are going to need. So outcomes, they should be certificates, they should count for college degrees, they should all those various things that would be an unbelievable thing to drive jobs, skills and wages.

Is the economy almost moving too quickly for education to be organized that way? No, no, because I think if you were, but we already spend a trillion dollars of something in K to 12. So if you were a principal of a high school, you should be thinking every year what should I add and which I subtract. So now you may be saying, I need less coding, but I need more cyber. I need more AI. Because of all these building we're doing, we need more

skilled trades. Union is doing excellent job, teaching people skilled trades. Those jobs, 100,000 a year, 120,000 a year. And then I, you know, not pounding just nails in, they're actually managing equipment. If you go to these, I've been to some of these advanced manufacturing schools. You know, you and I would have to spend the 12 weeks, how to manage that

“piece of machine tool and thing. And so, no, that's what they should be doing. That is their job.”

And so the second thing I suggest in there is the Erniegum tax credit. Well, if you are a

single parent, making, I think, $18,000 a year, the government gives you $70,000 a end of the year. And if you, with two children, if you have no children, they give you like 600, I would get rid of the child requirement. I would probably double your Erniegum tax credit. If you were making 18, the government will give you a 14, I would make it like more like a negative income tax, it comes in monthly. And the reason I like it so much is it, it, it, it, you give

the money that people directly you need it. It's not going through government programs, lecture in you. We should be doing with it. For the most part, it's going to help their families, schools, health, tutoring, you know, fixing the car, all those things. It'll be spent locally. So it actually be spent in those neighborhoods that need some of the help. And it has, it had great social outcomes. So every study ever read, less recidivism, less crime, less suicide,

“less depression, more household formation. And you're in 70 people to work. So I think it would”

actually be a home on end. Paul Ryan supports it, Democrats support, Republican support. I just, I think it would be better than most of the programs. So I'm thinking as you're talking of Alex Andrew, because your Cortes, your fellow New Yorker, who has been on NPR. It was last year. And she said a lot of people feel increasingly that everything is a scam that they're being ripped off. Why would you say to people who think that the people you deal with, people in your class,

the very successful wealthy people in this country, have lost sight of the national interest, are not taking care of the country. Yeah, I think that's a kind of a broad statement. It's a broad statement. It's a broad statement, both parties, but different ways. Well, I think there are people who don't care. I mean, there are people who don't care who are not wealthy, and people who don't care wealthy. I personally don't like those kind of people. So, you know,

I don't think that proportion is that different than what 10 years ago or 40 years ago,

80 years ago. And the other thing that I was always point out is that it's very often people

look at core capitalism and say, well, these are bad greedy people, but they're a bad greedy people in communism. Sure. And socialism. They're in every institution. I'm not supporting it. I think it's bad. It's not the reason we have flaws. We have a lot of flaws. Like, I can point out policy flaws. I remember mentioned education. Yeah. You know, I can, I make, I make a whole ism permitting certain regulations, certain mortgages. The, the regulations, the mortgages.

And I would agree with AOC. I hope you can help me on this. If we fix those regulations, mortgages would be a lot more affordable for $200,000 home. If we fix some of the affordable housing stuff, and you could build more affordable homes, you could create a lot more homes, start homes. The people would buy, buy those homes, we'd be able to get them mortgage, and they'd leave even rental units, you know, which reduced the price of rental for the people who need the rental. So,

there's so many things we can do to make this country better, faster, healthier, and help everybody. I want to note that you turned 70 recently. Yeah. Is there something you've learned in those many years that you wish you knew when you were 30, say? Yeah, I grew up with the same values, you know, my parents, my grandparents were a week immigrants, didn't finish high school. The values were to have a purpose in life, treat everyone well. Do the best you can,

leave the world a better place, and that's, that hasn't changed. Obviously, I've learned some stuff

you're tired is a really bad idea. So, I could give you tons of lessons like that. I was

“going to less and learned and relearned because you still make some of those mistakes, unfortunately.”

You said a purpose. That's your purpose to make the world a better place. And purpose,

you know, when they say on the cover, annual report this year is the 250th anniversary,

the Statue of Liberty, Erick and Flag, Life Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. When they

“said the pursuit of happiness, they didn't mean happiness like we mean happiness. Oh, you happy.”

You feel good. They meant purpose. That purpose to be an artist, politician, reporter, you know, business person, you could be just a caregiver or mother. You know, there's a great hot bed that's so in the boat that he would want, we would receive the Medal of Honor saying 50 years later, they realized that some of those people who day in and day out helped other human

beings that they are the real heroes, that they never gave up and they did it to, you know,

health and sickness and things like that. So, that's the purpose. You made the world a better place in the way you can contribute. Jamie Diamond, it's a pleasure talking with you again. Thank you so much. Thank you. Pleasure was mine. Thank you, all right. For more newsmakers from NPR News, you can search for the show wherever you get podcasts or watch it

“on NPR's YouTube channel. And remember, newsmakers like up first relies on supporters who value”

independent journalism and a free press. Join NPR Plus today to support our work and get perks from the podcasts you trust. Go to plus.npr.org. I'm Stephen Skip. Thanks for listening to up first from NPR News.