DealBook 2023: an interesting thing happened

Note: I finally am back here. I’ve been busy focusing on a project and what with all of the bad news throughout the world, I just didn’t have the energy to do the project and also create here. Hopefully with the project done, I can get back on schedule.

Two things that I’ve read about the DealBook struck me as interesting – there may be more but those are the two things I have read about.

Jamie Dimon

He actually said some stuff that indicates he is cognizant of what businesses have done to people, especially those who are poor. I have always figured that out of all of the Wall Street bankers and financiers, Jamie Dimon was probably the one most likely to recognize the damage our type of capitalism is doing and that we probably need to do something different.

Also, he may have learned from the bashing he got from Katie Porter about how much he is paying his employees.

“We’ve done a terrible job taking care of our bottom 30% of earners,” he said, telling the audience: “You all are wealthy and have money, but their average, their average wages are [low].”

“They’re the ones who lost their job in COVID,” he added. “They’re the ones who are dying five or six years younger than the rest of us. They’re the ones who don’t have medical insurance. They’re the ones whose schools don’t work, and they’re the ones dealing with crime. What the hell have we done as a nation?”

Fortune, Chloe Taylor, “JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon says America has failed its bottom 30%—and should stop sneering at Trump’s MAGA supporters: ‘What the hell have we done as a nation?’, 11/30/2023.

I did find it interesting that he chose a 30% figure when I seem to recall reading something along the lines of 50% or more. This could be my bias coming out.

During the DealBook Summit talks, Business Insider reported that Dimon was also asked by audience member and billionaire hedge funder Bill Ackman—who once urged the JPMorgan CEO to run for president—what he would hypothetically do if he were to be elected president of the United States.

…“I’d make people like you pay a little bit more,” he also told Ackman. “This carried interest stuff would be gone the day I got in office because it is unfair.”

Fortune, Chloe Taylor, “JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon says America has failed its bottom 30%—and should stop sneering at Trump’s MAGA supporters: ‘What the hell have we done as a nation?’, 11/30/2023.

It sounds like he recognizes that there have been some gross inequities going on and is still going on today. As long as we have the Milton Friedman dogma, we will have a huge wealth and income chasim in our society.

And finally, this is really interesting. He’s probably right about this, except for when they choose to ignore the facts and close their eyes to the criminality and brutality. He might sing a different song later on.

“We should stop talking about ultra-MAGA,” he insisted. “I think you’re insulting a large group of people, and making this assumption, scapegoating—which the press is pretty good at too—that these people believe in Trump’s family values and are supporting the personal person. I don’t think that’s true.”

Fortune, Chloe Taylor, “JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon says America has failed its bottom 30%—and should stop sneering at Trump’s MAGA supporters: ‘What the hell have we done as a nation?’, 11/30/2023.

Elon Musk

Oh boy, I just don’t know what is happening with him. He just seems to get worse and worse.

During the DealBook, he seemed to be saying FU to the advertisers. I didn’t see the video but a video of the video where commentators talked about his defiant attitude to advertisers.

I think he did apologize for his behavior regarding the Jews – I think, I’m not 100% sure. He apologized for something. Yeah, googling says he apologized for his antisemitic tweets.

But then he later did a video or audio of some sort on his Twitter/X with “a rogues gallery”: Alex Jones, Andrew Tate, Vivek Ramaswamy, and maybe others. Alex Jones and Andrew Tate are pretty bad, and Vivek Ramaswamy looks like he is on his way to joining the list of bad boys.

And Elon Musk is in the midst of this.

He’s trashing his reputation for innovation and out of box thinking with his continual appearance with really sketchy people. The halo effect of consorting with such people will stick to him and future generations will not look very kindly on him.

Think about Rudy Giuliani, who just received a verdict from the jury to pay Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman $148 million for his defamation of their character and basically ruining their lives. His reputation as America’s mayor is gone. He is a sad case. He’s 80 years old, facing the end of his life, with a trashed reputation.

I suspect the same will happen to Elon Musk. I don’t know how he ran Tesla, SpaceX and Neuralink when he is trashing Twitter/X. It’s hard to connect his running of Twitter with his other companies. I seriously wonder how he ran the others. I have read/heard that he actually did not start the others but instead bought them out. In other words, it’s kind of suggested that he really was not the reason for the success of those companies – it was the engineers who got it going.

I don’t know but I just can’t reconcile how he is handling Twitter with the success of Tesla, SpaceX and Neuralink. It just doesn’t compute.