‘Something Went Terribly Wrong’: How To Think About Corporate Virtue Signaling
As I was briskly running through Jamie Dimon's latest annual letter, it occurred to me that the financial media (especially conservative financial media) will likely give short shrift to the "public policy" section.
To be as clear as absolutely possible, I don't generally care what business luminaries have to say about politics and, I'd gently suggest, you probably shouldn't either.
Corporate America lobbies relentlessly for its own interests. The money spent in the process distorts policymaki
“Hoping that things will self-correct is not a strategy – working on solutions is.” ~Dimon
Wealth of the greedy Individual or The Wealth of a Nation
Even the greedy individuals may understand that China in the lead will find them out and snuff them out. The world is not that big anymore.
I’d like to add a slightly different angle:
I believe more and more business leaders, certainly including Mr. Dimon, are starting to realize that a consumer base unable to cover unexpected expenses in excess of $ 400,- (and this was pre-pandemic) will not be much of a consumer base going forward.
If your customers, as a group, are unable to afford your product, your bottom line will suffer.
While this aspect certainly includes a healthy dose of corporate self-interest, I think it might be one of the rare occasions in which corporate and public interest might align.
I think this is true to the extent that companies see the writing is on the wall for stock buybacks and financial engineering being an acceptable alternative to actually running a company that produces things and sells them at a profit. If interest rates are already at rock bottom and have been for a while then there is no more milk in this cow so it’s time to kill it and get on to the next cow. In a new era of steady or rising interest rates there aren’t any real choices but for business to get back to the old ways which means all the sudden they need consumers with flush pockets to buy buy buy. Of course they don’t want to start by raising wages to match where they should have been had they tracked with productivity but if the government could just step in and give everyone some pocket money that would be just great.
🙂 I’m with you there. Always count on the short term greed and selfishness of the C suite, it’s been a winning bet forever.
Just today I came across an ironic gem that fits here: folk singer / activist Arlo Guthrie amplifying capitalist Jamie Dimon’s points in his penultimate paragraph above. It’s from a 1993 concert, Arlo doing a 13:00 min rendition of Amazing Grace – in his style, that’s 12:30 of hilarious storytelling with 30 seconds of sing-a-long at the end.
On stage, he recalled Pete Seeger once telling him:
“If the world was perfect, if everybody [was smart, happy, had money, nobody was homeless, etc] you’d have to go an awful long way out of your way to make a difference in this world. You’d have to do a whole hell of a lot to try and improve the way it was.
But in a world that sucks … like this one… [audience laughing] … you don’t have to do very much at all! There was never a time in the history of the world, where you could do so little and get so much done! ”
He was pointing out the common man’s role in improving our collective lot in life through our personal interactions, of course. This concert was in 1993, which I don’t recall as particularly bad, so one can imagine that the ROI on decency is even greater now. Hallelujah, I suppose.
The bar is set pretty low for the Bidens and Dimons of the world to improve things, given where we are in the US, and some of the problems need to be solved by the common man rather than money. Good to know it’s a great time to “invest”.
It’s on youtube, and worth hunting for his “rabbit” story alone…
When I see Dimon and Bezos endorse a wealth tax then I’ll pay a bit more attention…
Enlightened self interest is better than the other alternatives
We can add Jamie to those who have seen the light and are moved to voice an opinion. He’s on the right track. It’s like the engineer on one of the old steam driven locomotives turning to the fireman and saying ‘we need to start shoveling coal’. I’ll start believing when he is actually shoveling.