The Billionaire Who Got Tired of Pretending
Jamie Dimon priced in liberal values, profited off them, and is now offloading them like any other declining asset.
“I have a lot of friends who are Democrats, and they’re idiots.”
Jamie Dimon said this in Dublin, Ireland, while his bank remains one of the biggest beneficiaries of U.S. financial policy crafted by both parties. The timing is as curious as the bluntness.
JPMorgan still prints billions under Democratic governance. So why bite the hand that signs the regulation?
Dimon broke ranks and dropped the script. The polite fiction that Wall Street and progressive politics can coexist, that you can be pro-DEI and pro-shareholder simultaneously, is fraying.
What used to be whispered inside boardrooms is now said on stage. The alliance between elite capital and elite liberalism is splintering due to performance fatigue.
DEI was never a moral project for Wall Street. It was reputational arbitrage, a way to preempt regulation and buy immunity from progressive backlash.
Hiring Black consultants, sponsoring Pride floats, and tweeting support for George Floyd were all cheap insurance policies. The cost was minimal, and the payoff was access: friendly regulators, passive activists, and a narrative that JPMorgan was on the right side of history.
But the math has changed.
Republicans now control the federal levers. Courts are hostile to affirmative action. ESG funds are under scrutiny. Performative progressivism no longer protects you. The same DEI language once used as armor is now a liability in red states, and Dimon sees the writing on the wall.
Meanwhile, the rise of candidates like Zohran Mamdani threatens the deeper status quo.
Rent control, public groceries, and socialist rhetoric don't just annoy Jamie Dimon — they jeopardize the financial architecture his bank profits from: private real estate syndicates, municipal bond trading, and credit-based consumption. What Mamdani calls a"people's economy,” Dimon hears as nationalizing the client base.”
Dimon insists DEI is “morally right” and “good for business.”
However, only one of those phrases has ever mattered on Wall Street.
We built a system where power can borrow the language of justice, only to discard it when it becomes unprofitable. Dimon didn’t abandon liberal values. He never needed them. It's a signal when elites start insulting their former allies in public. They're repositioning.
Jamie Dimon just said the quiet part out loud. Don’t be distracted by the volume. Listen to the shift.