There is being bullish about the economy, and there is being bullish about the economy.
Put Jamie Dimon in the latter category.
The chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co. made that clear during a recent online conversation about the post-pandemic economy.
“Usually I don’t like to make projections and forecasts,” he said during the discussion with Jon Huntsman, chairman of World Trade Center Utah. “I think you’re going to see the biggest booming economy that we’ll all ever see, ever in our lifetime. … The boom is going to take place, one way or another.”
Dimon cited several reasons for his optimism, including individuals having lots of money in checking and savings accounts and businesses with $2 trillion “in extra cash.” Neither was in place following the 2008 Great Recession, when consumers and companies were both overleveraged and spent years recovering, he said.
“I think when that sun comes out and those flowers burst, and any American who wants a vaccine will have it by the end of April or something like that, I think people are dying to travel, we see it in the spend. … we see it today in homebuying. People are booking cruises now for next year,” Dimon said.
“It might be the only thing that stops it in the short run is a deadly variant that the vaccines don’t work on.”
Dimon noted that 2020 was unprecedented in many ways because of the pandemic. No one could have predicted a global shutdown, or that government would move so quickly to address it, that companies would have so many people working from home, that the nation would suffer “some permanent scarring” as many businesses closed, and other elements that made the year so dramatic, he said.
Huntsman said 2020 exposed the vulnerabilities of the U.S. and its ability to deal with a crisis. But the nation learned about its resilience, the ability to let go of expectations and rethink priorities, as well as patience, tolerance and love. People also learned “how much we could do with less of,” he said. It all leaves the U.S. better prepared at the human, business and government levels for a future crisis.
The online discussion touched on several other points, including the threat of inflation, changes expected because of a new presidential administration, the government infrastructure bill, global trade and societal issues.
Huntsman said the federal infrastructure measure could have long-lasting impacts on the economy, if the funds are spent judiciously.
“My hope would be that we reflect on this in 10 and 20 years and say, ‘That was a really important moment for the United States. We didn’t give billions here and billions there and it was spent for projects that didn’t mean anything longer-term, but rather we have something to show for it. We’re back in the game, from an infrastructure standpoint, from a competitiveness standpoint,’ because you can’t manufacture and you can’t export and get your goods to market unless you’ve got a 21st century-plus infrastructure and the ability to do that,” he said. “I think we could come out of this in a really good position 20 years from now.”
Likewise, the U.S. can confront economic competition from China, the two said. Huntsman said the U.S. has “everything we need to succeed,” although serious and deep divisions domestically can distract from that.
“We’re down for the count but that doesn’t mean we’re out of the game,” he said, adding that “China is not 10 feet tall” and suffers from “serious fissures” that could derail its growth model.
Dimon said the U.S. has several advantages over China. “We shouldn’t fear their success but instead our failure,” he said.
On a broader scale, Dimon said that American exceptionalism is true, and Huntsman said the nation “still has the recipes for success.”
“We are poised to excel in the post-pandemic economy,” added Miles Hansen, president and CEO of World Trade Center Utah. “That’s true as a nation. That’s true particularly here in Utah. … At the end of the day, our national success is really the cumulative effect of billions of choices that each and every one of us are making every day as individuals and as companies.”
Hansen called for Americans to “calibrate our strategies” for a post-pandemic economy and for companies to position themselves to excel.
“If we do that on an individual level,” he said, “if we get it right here and the local level and state level, then we’ll be just fine on the national level as we go and we compete with partners and adversaries around the world.”