Simone Del Rosario: In a year where Americans are anxiously waiting for interest rates to drop, the CEO of the world’s largest bank warns they may go even higher than they are today, and don’t count out a recession.

There are two CEOs in this country whose annual letters to shareholders are more widely anticipated than the rest, devoured by people who may not even have any ties to the company. One is Warren Buffett, and the other is Jamie Dimon.

The captain of JPMorgan Chase for nearly two decades, Dimon’s letter out Monday pours water on investor enthusiasm that the Federal Reserve can orchestrate lower inflation while still growing the economy. Dimon wrote:

“These markets seem to be pricing in at a 70% to 80% chance of a soft landing… I believe the odds are a lot lower than that…Therefore, we are prepared for a very broad range of interest rates, from 2% to 8% or even more, with equally wide-ranging economic outcomes — from strong economic growth with moderate inflation…to a recession with inflation; i.e., stagflation.”

That’s what he called the worst-case scenario. To learn more about what stagflation looks like, search the term for this article on our website, SAN.com. 

Jamie Dimon: You know, I love my country. Maybe one day I’ll serve my country in one capacity or another. But I love what I do.

Simone Del Rosario: Dimon’s letter comes at a time when his name is being floated as a possible pick for Treasury secretary, should Donald Trump win the election. Dimon is not an ardent supporter of Trump.

Jamie Dimon: Even if you’re a very liberal Democrat, I urge you, help Nikki Haley, too. Get a choice on the Republican side that might be better than Trump.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: And is that your view, that it’s anything but Trump?

Jamie Dimon: I would never say that because he might be the president and I’d have to deal with that too.

Simone Del Rosario: But more recently, in Davos, Dimon praised Trump policies, from NATO to immigration to economic growth. And in his letter advocating for U.S. support of Ukraine, he even italicized a Trump phrase, America first. 

Jamie Dimon: My heart is Democratic but my brain is kind of Republican.

Simone Del Rosario: That brain is thinking a lot about AI of late. He listed it as the most important issue facing JPMorgan Chase. 

As transformational as “the printing press, the steam engine, electricity, computing and the internet”…Dimon wrote, “we are completely convinced the consequences [of AI] will be extraordinary.”

He says JPMorgan currently employs more than 2,000 AI-machine learning experts and data scientists. 

And his predictions on how it will transform their workforce are ones that ripple throughout the economy. 

“Over time, we anticipate that our use of AI has the potential to augment virtually every job, as well as impact our workforce composition. It may reduce certain job categories or roles, but it may create others as well.”

He said affected employees would be retrained and redeployed, a task that’s also front of mind for tech giants. A group of them, including Google, Microsoft, IBM and Intel, are aiming to upskill or reskill 95 million workers in the next 10 years whose jobs AI threatens.