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And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Ax Files, with your host David Axelrod.

For 16 years, Jamie Diamond has reigned to top the JP Morgan Chase organization, building it into a finance colossus.

Now Diamond is speaking out about the obligations of business not just to shareholders, but to all its stakeholders in the broader community.

I sat down with him virtually, of course, at the Institute of Politics last week, to talk about this, the state of the economy, and his reflections on the country, as well as his own journey, the triumphs, setbacks, controversies, and a recent brush with death.

Here's that conversation.

Jamie Diamond, welcome. Welcome to the Ax Files, but also welcome back to Chicago. You don't have to be a linguist to see that you are a New Yorker.

But you spent some time out here in the early 2000s. How did a New Yorker fare out here in Chicago?

So welcome everybody. Sorry, we can't do this in person, but we'll try to do it next year. I moved out there in the year 2000, because I took over bank plumage is there.

I moved my whole family. I absolutely love Chicago. I think it's even a better place, nicer place to live than New York. I love the restaurants, being on the lake, and all things like that is very close to the office.

I do remember they were like, New Yorkers were worried about me. Chicago is worried about me. They always asked me, you're going to go back to New York, and you're going to go back to New York?

I said, if I die here, and they sent my ashes back to New York, they would say, see, we told you, we were right.

But I love Chicago. I still have a brother there. I'm hopefully going to head out there shortly to start road trips again.

I'm going to head out there to the Institute of Politics. You had a brush with greatness as a student with the University of Chicago, even though you were at a lesser institution, we'll say.

Yeah, my brother got his PhD in physics there. And so I, which I love physics, I went out to visit the him at the Fermi Labs. And so I've been out there obviously many times.

I did apply the Chicago Business School and learned a little bit about math there. But you said you had an interaction with the legendary Milton Friedman when you were a student.

It's a unbelievable story. So I read in college, his book, Capitalism Freedom, which is still a great read, by the way.

And I'd written a critique of it. And on a log, I sent it to him. And a couple of weeks later, a month later, I got back a handwritten, like eight days note, critique of my critique.

Basically saying, kid, you were okay, but you missed some major points. But it's amazing that a teacher would take that time and effort to do something like that.

Yeah, you just speak of teaching you just released your annual letter to your hundred million shareholders of the bank. But it was also in many ways a letter to the country as a whole.

And it was pretty remarkable for its emphasis on social and economic policy and prescriptions, not just on the health of your own institution.

I want to talk about all that. But before we do, I just want to give people a sense of your own journey. You hear these stories about the kid who goes to college and was an art major and took an economics course or a finance course and said, wow, this is what I want to do.

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