The state of corporate America is a tragic one: Its greatest and brightest are so determined to make a buck that they should beg forgiveness when merely stating the apparent.
Final week at Boston Faculty, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon was riffing on US-China relations and mentioned one thing each right-thinking particular person on the earth ought to pray for: That a fantastic American firm will outlast the brutal Communist Chinese regime.
However CEO survival as of late — even when it’s the pinnacle of the nation’s largest bank — is a weird spectacle. In nationwide politics, company chieftains dance to the tune of progressive elites, fearing backlash from the media and their Twitter hordes.
Recall that Dimon himself took a knee in help of Black Lives Matter throughout final 12 months’s summer of love to attain some lefty kudos regardless of the motion’s Marxist underpinnings. If BLM had its manner, JPM could be shuttered and Dimon summoned for a Soviet-style present trial after being charged for crimes against humanity (a ok a being a capitalist).
Possibly even worse, these CEOs spend lots of time abroad dancing to the tune of dictators in locations like Saudi Arabia and Russia. Principally, nevertheless, it’s in China as they appear to faucet into the nation’s state-run market economy, which guarantees monumental income given the nation’s large inhabitants and rising normal of dwelling.
And meaning Jamie Dimon has to eat crow when he says the reality even a few nation that represses religious minorities, murders dissidents and has been credibly accused of unleashing COVID on the world and attempting to cowl it up.
To know the absurdity of Dimon’s apologia to the communist Chinese language, let’s return to precisely what Dimon said last week that prompted not only one bended-knee about-face, however two.
“I used to be simply in Hong Kong and I made a joke that the Communist Social gathering is celebrating its hundredth 12 months. So is JPMorgan. I’d make you a wager we last more,” he quipped, including: “I can’t say that in China. They probably are listening anymanner.”
Classic Dimon. Left to his personal gadgets, he’s brutally and refreshingly trustworthy. Who can neglect that when a lot of the liberal corporate elite stored their distance from President Trump, Dimon vowed to work with him. Later, Dimon didn’t suppose twice about offending the chief of the free world when Jamie claimed he might easily beat Don in an election as a result of Dimon’s “smarter.”
Gotta like it, and likewise obtained to like what Dimon mentioned about China and his dig at its large and abusive surveillance state. Finally week’s Boston Faculty occasion, Dimon mentioned he “detest(s)” Trump’s legendary callous persona. Then he rightly gave kudos to Trump for his anti-China policies “betrigger it was time to do somefactor about” the nation’s abusive trade practices and outright theft of American mental property as the value of doing enterprise there.
Inside a couple of hours came the apologies (“I remorse I shouldn’t have made that remark . . . it’s by no means proper to joke about or denigrate any group of individuals, whether or not it’s a rustic, its management, or any a part of a society and tradition”) after phrase of the occasion began making its manner round media circles, and somebody inside JPM reminded the boss that the financial institution does lots business in China. For all of the dangerous stuff that goes down on the mainland, JPM is trying to do extra with the tyrants, not much less. That’s why he simply traveled to Hong Kong within the first place.
So earlier than the Chinese language might cancel JPM’s asset-management utility and jail some of its workers who work there, the mea culpa maximas hit the tape. I’m informed the corporate issued two apologies as a result of the corporate thinks it is aware of sufficient about Chinese culture that overt exhibits of respect and contrition work with its commissars.
And it did. The Chinese language later insisted all of the dangerous issues (the reality) that Dimon mentioned about them had been a lot ado about nothing they usually’re nonetheless trying ahead to working with the financial institution.
I requested a senior JPM govt why Dimon determined to apologize. In spite of everything, Jamie was simply being Jamie. The exec’s response: “Ha!
He doesn’t really feel it’s proper to joke about a complete nation and its leaders.”
However in actuality, what he mentioned wasn’t a joke. Given the selection between JPMorgan or the communist government of China lasting one other 100 years, we should always all hope for the previous.
