If Wall Street is the beating heart of American capitalism, the life-sustaining funding it pours across the economy has traditionally been aimed only at increasing shareholder value.
Greed was beneficial to the country, for lack of a better phrase.
However, after decades of ignoring other governance challenges, a growing number of boardrooms are realizing that being a good corporate citizen may be a reward in and of itself, which has some legislators hot under the collar.
Now, Jaime Dimon, the public face of investment banking, disputed on Wednesday any suggestion that a greater focus on customers, employees, and local communities—known in corporate governance jargon as stakeholder capitalism—was a misguided attempt to appease a supposed leftist agenda.
"I haven't gotten up yet," says the narrator "at an Autonomous Research conference on the first day of Pride Month, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon retorted. "And I believe that some individuals confuse stakeholder capitalism with being awake."Sen. Ted Cruz accused BlackRock CEO Larry Fink of abandoning capitalism in favor of "woke" investing last week, and suggested that the money management be prevented from voting on behalf of its investors to prevent it from furthering its own political goals.Cruz takes issue with the use of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria in its screening, which has grown so common that some fund managers are being probed for greenwashing.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon portrayed himself on Wednesday as a "red-blooded, free market capitalist," despite a rare reprimand last month when shareholders rejected a proposed $53 million bonus.
Despite this, he appeared to agree with arguments touting the advantages of stakeholder capitalism for investors. Advocates claim it boosts employee morale and reduces absenteeism, as well as assisting recruiters in attracting a more diverse set of top talent and keeping customers loyal to their brand for longer.
"Any senator or congressman who claims that's woke isn't thinking straight," Dimon remarked.Even "Neutron" Jack Welch, the famed former CEO of GE who is credited with popularizing the primacy of generating shareholder value, subsequently defied the idea. Just months after Wall Street's high-risk wagers on the US housing market precipitated the global financial crisis, he famously branded focussing entirely on shareholder wealth "the worst idea in the world" in early 2009.
The trend away from Reagan's unrestricted free markets and toward cautious and appropriate regulation has alarmed many Republicans, who have responded by labeling the shift "woke."
It's part of a larger national trend in which identity politics and the culture war are used to frame a variety of aspects of life.
Elon Musk, the most recent billionaire to join the Republican Party, has generously used the derogatory to protect his corporate interests, which include Tesla and SpaceX.
Last month, the divisive CEO questioned a famous vaccination proponent's motivations because he taught at Yale University, which Musk described as "the core of the awakened mind virus aiming to destroy civilisation."
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