‘No nonsense’ Wall Street titans displayed – Business News
What are these Wall Street titans afraid of, precisely?
Jamie Dimon and David Solomon — possibly the 2 strongest bankers in New York — are invariably described as “tough,” “no nonsense” and “hard-charging.”
Yet once they every met up final week with town’s socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, you’d assume they’d simply toured a rose garden with Xi Jinping.
Dimon and Mamdani held a “friendly” and “constructive dialogue” on Monday, a JPMorgan source advised me.
The pair chatted concerning the need for “public-private partnerships.”
A couple of hours later at Gracie Mansion, an insider advised me that Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, visited the mayor, and no person talked about Ken Griffin, the billionaire boss of hedge fund giant Citadel.
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It was Griffin, you’ll recall, whose Manhattan penthouse Mamdani used because the backdrop for a noxious video on “taxing the rich.”
Griffin’s identify didn’t come up with Dimon, both, as a result of “Dimon and Solomon made it clear that the mayor shouldn’t do things to discourage business from staying in the city,” a individual with data of the conversations mentioned.
This is what passes for straight discuss from large bank bosses nowadays?
With a 34-year-old lefty politico who by no means held a non-public sector job, who received’t condemn “globalize the intifada” and who truly believes the federal government ought to open almost half a dozen grocery shops in New York City?
Last week, I fired off a column that exposed how Griffin — who condemned Mamdani’s video as “creepy” — had remained the undisturbed elephant within the room during these nice huddles.
It was good to see that at the very least Dimon — about 24 hours after we gave him this prod — tried to set the file straight.
In a Bloomberg TV interview, Dimon referred to as the mayor an “ideologue,” including, “I don’t care what he says.”
Instead, Dimon might be watching whether or not New York turns into a higher place to stay and work on Mamdani’s watch.
If it doesn’t, people and companies will proceed to “vote with their feet,” Dimon declared.
Now you inform us?
Where have been you during final fall’s mayoral marketing campaign when Mamdani promised to rework the epicenter of capitalism into Moscow on the Hudson?
And why didn’t you point out any of this when the smiling Marxist was sitting in your workplace a few hours earlier?
Yes, Dimon acquired a few good headlines on Bloomberg, however there’s an cliché that becoming for people like Jamie, Solly and the remainder of our almost silent business neighborhood: If you aren’t half of the answer, you might be half of the issue.
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Wake up, guys!
Time to step up, guys — that’s, in the event you actually care concerning the future of our metropolis.
I take no pleasure writing any of this as a result of I’ve immense respect for each Dimon and Solomon.
They’re sensible guys who make use of people and provides loads away not simply in taxes however to charity.
Finance is the final large business different than real estate that is still domiciled right here, having survived years of buffoonish political leaders, rampant crime, crappy faculties and a deteriorating high quality of life.
Wall Street remains to be right here within the sense that they’ve HQs in Manhattan.
But financial companies are shifting people and jobs to locations the place taxes are decrease and the commies aren’t in charge.
JPM now has more people in Texas regardless of its swanky new digs on Park Avenue.
Goldman has created one thing like a second HQ in Utah.
So why aren’t Jamie and Solly talking up more as a substitute of packing up their operations and shifting?
Are they apprehensive they might get the identical therapy as Griffin?
An exec from one of the companies protested to me that his chief can “have a polite conversation and still speak his mind.”
But was Dimon actually “speaking his mind” when he handed Mamdani a e book about financial development tasks after their little confab?
At least Jamie tried to replicate a bit of the fact that Mamdani brings to New York in that Bloomberg interview (after a little shove by your pleasant columnist, or course).
Solomon, in the meantime, has been frighteningly silent.
It’s in all probability a little unfair to single them out.
I’m advised almost all of the business chiefs who’ve met with the mayor have come away charmed by his fast smile and cordial presence.
Nevertheless, Mamdani’s insurance policies are harmful and harmful.
He’s a left-wing ideologue with an animus towards this nation’s founding rules and a Third Worldism that paints Israel as a prison state — in a metropolis that holds the most important Jewish population outdoors of Israel.
Sorry, Jamie & Co., however being well mannered with somebody like this simply received’t cut it.
