Jamie Dimon on Trump, Taxes, and a U.S. Renaissance

[crashtech]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-12-22/jamie-dimon-on-trump-taxes-and-a-u-s-renaissance

I went into this not expecting much, but I kinda got hooked into the interview and read it all. For someone statospherically wealthy, who by rights ought to be completely out of touch with common concerns, this guy gets it, imo.

I think one of the greatest disgraces in this country is the fact that in a lot of inner-city schools, 50 percent of the kids don’t graduate high school. And even those kids who graduate are not necessarily job-ready. That’s a crime. That’s America at its absolute worst. We are allowing that to happen, and these kids don’t have the opportunity we all had at one point in life. We have to fix it. It’s not whether something’s free. It’s whether it ends up where you’re properly trained for a job. If you go to Germany, for example, two-thirds of the kids at 15 or 16 go to vocational school. Those vocational schools work with local businesses so the kids get a certificate that leads to a job.

145 million people work in America; 125 million of them work for private enterprise; 20 million work for government—firemen, sanitation, police, teachers. We hold them in very high regard. But you know, if you didn’t have the 125 you couldn’t pay for the other 20. Business is a huge positive element in society. But for years it’s been beaten down as if we’re terrible people.

Some of it really surprised me since I thought the guy was nominally a Democrat. He's espousing many conservative viewpoints along with at least one center-left one in this interview, but it a way that might actually attract a lot of centrists. I hope his optimism turns out to be well-founded.

 

[theeedude]

Wall Street has been whistling past the graveyard since the election trying to peddle some optimistic Cool Aid.