Transcripts For CSPAN Bank 20240705

Good afternoon and welcome to the city club of cleveland where. Im the chief executive here ad its my privilege to introduce our speakertoand to ask him a few questions as well. Brian moynihan, the c. E. O. Of bank of america. As the country and world grapple with the aftermath of the pandemic, inflation, the Banking Industry has felt its share of, well call it volatility. In march, three small to midsized u. S. Banks failed, leading to a chain of events that we now refer to as the 2023 banking crisis. And on top of this, add to this the widespread calls for increased equity, access to Economic Opportunity and the increasing reliance on emerging technologies, its evident that the world of bank and financial is changing quite a bit. Brian moynihan becamed c. E. O. Became the c. E. O. In 2010 which feels like a century ago. It was a long time ago. Its the Second Largest Bank in the u. S. Youre all wondering whats the first, its jpmorgan chase. He lead as team of approximately 215,000 employees dedicated to making Financial Lives better for people, for companies of all sizes, for Institutional Investors across the u. S. And around the world. Were grateful to have him here today to get his perspective on the economy, the industry and Global Trends shaping both. If youre a part of our live stream audience, during the second half of the program, youu can get a question in by texting it. Please join me in billion coming brian phoeupb me in welcoming break point moynihan. [applause] brian its a pleasure to be here in cleveland. I had a clans to be with my team earlier. Its great to be here. Good to see the city. Dan welcome back to ohio. Brian was born in marietta. So lets just start out talking about where the economy is right now. As you see it with a lot more data than the rest of us see it. Brian yeah. So we bank of America Research team is the best in the world and they continue to look at the situation and they basically have been consistent for about a year and a half that there will be a mild recession, the question is when will it occur . They continuously push that out a little bit. Most recently they moved two quarters of a recession, the first two quarters next year, from the third, fourth and first quarters. So its a mild recession. It happens a few quarters out and thats been the thing. People keep predicting a few quarters out and it just keeps pushing out. And that comes down to, we can talk about what we see in the data, what consumers are doing, employment levels are strong. Dan is there a probability there wont be a recession if we keep pushing it out . [laughter] brian the interesting question is people ask what it will feel like . Inflation already makes consumers feel different, higher Interest Rates make consumers feel different. So the for the fed for two things had to happen to get inflation under control. You had to raise Interest Rates and pull some of the money out of the system. Both are being accomplished. Theyre having the impact people want. Things slow down. Car purchases slow down. Everything is rate sensitive. Moves quickly. And then takes time to get through. Trt thing is consumers are still spending. But the rate of if you look at our consumers who spend about 4. 5 trillion a year on check and debit cards, writing checks, etc. , that goes out a year. If you looked at it from 2021 to 2022, it grew about 9. 5 . If you look at it year to date its 5 ish. If you look at june so forth, its 4 ish. That is more consistent with where it was in 2017, 2018, 2019, where we had higher Interest Rates and slowing down the economy and taking monetary accommodation out, but you had low growth and low inflation. So that consumer change in activity is an indicator that the affect of the rates, the effect of all the different factors are slowing down the economy and thats very important because thats the hard thing the American Consumers likes to spend money, travels, does a lot of good things the and when theyre employed, its hard to slow them down but they slowed them down enough that that means inflation should get under control. Dan there was a lot of excess liquidity for consumers during postpandemic. Brian the 30 drop in the economy in covid for a quarter and then the next quarter was down i think double digits and then basically you came back, you almost recovered. So it was very needed to put a lot of stuff to work fast because you never knew what the next quarter was going to look like. Its hard to remember all the things, p. P. P. , all the stuff came into the economy. Dan its emotionally trigger building you talk about it. [laughter] brian then you get all the way through 2020 and economies are starting to open up and were grinding back. Still high unemployment and things that were very serious. And an uncertain pathway of what would happen next. We knew that looking back. We knew none of that. Masks werent a thing for the first three or four weeks. Everybody thought it was moved by hands, remember . So we didnt know what we think we know now, we didnt know. What happened is they kept throwing things at it. Then in early 2021 you had two big stimulus. As far as that stimulus far exceeds the depth, the hole. The economic hole as being a pot hole, we didnt just fill a pot hole. We went way above it. Dan it looks like an overcorrection but it was needed because you didnt know. Brian that drove inflation. Then the fed on the other side said whoa. Even our consumers accounts when you look today for customers at the beginning of tw epbts, 2020, 2,000, 5,000 in the account, they averaged 3500 at that time. They still have 13,000 in that same account. Everybody thought they spent it down. It moved down last year and moved back up with tax returns. So thats an indicator that whats happening is theyll take a little longer to get through the system and so theyre slowing down or spending now, student loan repayments start, theres a lot of things that will be dragged. Then the fed it taking money out of the Banking System by raising rates to the point where direct ownership, treasuries, other things move money out of the systems, thats why its coming back down. Dan when you tell the story that way, it actually sounds to me like a pretty resilient economy managed by fairly capable people. Brian its an extremely resilient economy because of what america is. Entrepreneurship, capitalism, profit making. And all that then creates a lot of activity. Sizable. So think about it, 3. 7 unemployment or whatever it is. Thats alltime low levels in our country. Very rarely has been below this level. So its not only resilient, its because this country attracts capital and activity like no other place does. Dan the crisis earlier this year, though, how did that look from your point of view, from your Vantage Point as c. E. O. Of this enormous Financial Institution . Brian when the rate structure went up so fast and certain Business Models couldnt with stand, that thats not unusual because those of you who are as old as i am, you go back and remember the dotcom crisis and the fallen angels crisis we call it when the Large Companies failed in the United States in the 2000 area and stuff, you think about all that. Theres always things that happened in periods of fast adjustment. The rate rise is the fastest that people know. And it went to levels that were very different than people experienced because from 2008 really to 2017 or 2008, the 2018, the rate structure was zero. Then it moved up to 2. 5 . Then people forget the fed was cutting rates at the end of 2019 because they thought theyd overshot and were bouncing back. So an idea of a 5 fed funds rate, the idea of so all that cut people who had Business Models were consistent but theyre very different Business Models than the average bank. Thats what people at the time you werent sure how far this would go. But once you got by the first few weeks and a group of us stepped in to try to help one of the companies, the sales took place, people stepped back and looked at it, things calmed down. Its basically been relatively calm since then. We still have the question of whats the economy going to look like and will there be deep recession. Dan apparently three quarters brian we just got the stress test results for our industry yesterday. Dan congratulations on that. Brian what that says for the big banks, 900 plus billion dollars of capital, if you look across the 30 banks, they say 100 billion losses. It is a pretty impressive thing. That scenario, up to 10 . Commercial real estate dropping immediately. These factors on prices dropping by 300 basis points, stuff that is wild. And yet the ability of the industry to withstand that is demonstrated by this testing. The real ability to withstand was demonstrated when you had the massive movement, huge monetary buildup, Interest Rates rising fast, deposits moving out of the system fast on purpose. The fed is trying to shrink the size of the Banking Industry. All that took place. It survived the theoretical test. That is a pretty good outcome. Dan these models, they are nothing compared to what we have all been through. Brian they are meant to simulate it. Everything is different than the models. Dan i want to circle back to the crisis earlier this year. You mentioned the best Research Team on the planet earlier that is predicting this two quarter recession next year. Did they predict failures of some of these Smaller Banks . Brian i dont think anybody really when things change, you are looking for the pea under the mattress. What caused the change in the system . Our chief risk officer and those guys are saying that happens, where is the Collateral Damage . I did not see a lot of people have that. Just the rate of change was different because of the uniqueness of the Business Models. We will see that play out. Large ones have failed. Bank of new england in 1984. Different republican texas, same timeframe, southeast bancorp. Dan you are naming the players from the 1948 indians or something. [laughter] brian i could not do that. Unfortunately i was a reds fan growing up. It was very fortunate, it was the glory years. [laughter] dan okay, well, for the benefit of our Radio Audience i will mention we are talking with reds fan brian moynihan. [laughter] that happens to be the ceo of bank of america. Brian i remember coming up here, they used to do Little League day. [indiscernible] i remember driving three or four hours up here, doubleheader, drive back. It was always cold as heck. [laughter] but it was always a lot of fun. Eight hours of baseball was a good day. Dan same field where Satchel Paige played. Brian i remember watching one player, i think he hit two homeruns but that could be a false memory. Dan as a pitcher . [laughter] i want to ask you about the Banking Industrys role in supporting the housing market, both around housing production, Housing Affordability on the mortgage lending side, and in particular a market like cleveland. Bank of america has opened two branches in Greater Cleveland that are in low to moderate income neighborhoods, which is meaningful. Bank of america is a sponsor of city club programming. I should have acknowledged that. What do you think the bank can do to provide more access to that kind of Home Ownership opportunity for the low to moderate income families looking for the 50,000 house, not the jumbo loan . Brian one of the things is we come to a market like cleveland and have 12 Financial Centers and go to 15. We have eight lines of business. It is bringing all the businesses to cleveland. Before we had commercial banking, we had Merrill Lynch and private banking. But by complete historical accident, i. E. We did not buy a company somewhere along the road to have branches in the buckeye state. There was no rhyme or reason. Then it is time to fill it out. When we do that, what we want to see is what we have in washington dc or charlotte or boston or whatever. You build out with a balance toward all the customers you will serve. That means in the 4000 branches we have, 30 art are in my neighborhood. I was off the branch today at carnegie and 79th. That community is important. Those are good things. Talking about housing, if you look across the cities and talk to people, housing availability, affordability, whatever the issue, it is a different but consistent issue. That issue is typically development on one hand. In charlotte we are 30,000 units short. In other places it might be the units you have are not fit for purpose, and others it may not be in the right locations. We think about three big things, one is the regular mortgage business. We do agency qualified mortgages and everything in between. That is standard 20 down payment. Then in the Specialized Program, what we have learned over the years in these, especially for firsttime homebuyers, we need to work with agencies in the local communities to identify borrowers to identify buyers but to also counsel the buyers. That is a 15 billion commitment. We will do several billion of that every year with a bunch of agencies. The third element is development. We do about 5 million of Housing Development work a year, loan monitoring, mixeduse developments, but all in that vein, its not the stuff done in the regular commercial real estate business. That has a role. What we perceive also is a lack of equity for developers that will take more risk in helping parts of cities go. We put up an equity fund in places like charlotte to help developers move faster. Those are programs that are team can figure out. It takes all that type of stuff. It takes Specialized Program stuff and the development of units stuff, then taking developers that might not otherwise be able to get the equity. Dan i want to go to a bigger question. In 2022 in your annual report there is a headline that says we are capitalists at bank of america, which seems selfevident to me but apparently not to everybody. Why did you have to call that out in the annual report . Brian because i get asked the question. In congressional testimony by both sides of the aisle, are you a capitalist . Which i think is a funny question to be asked. Dan if you are running a bank. [laughter] brian our sole purpose in life is to help everybody participate in capitalism, individuals, companies, hourly workers, the richest in the world, Capital Market participants. Brian why are they asking the question . Brian because the debate is about how you do capitalism. The reality is capitalism is the only system that is going to solve the problems we are going to solve. That is the thing everyone will work on. If you have an Energy Transition it will be the private sector that drives it. Governments dont have the money. You cannot regulate it. Where are you going to get the money to do it . You will get the money by having the equity come in, the lending come in. People say you are not a capitalist because you are doing that to be green. No, because we had 150 billion of it last year. That is a big business. If we disclose that the tax benefits from the renewable deal are three quarters of a billion dollars, thats pretty interesting. Dan if congress is enacting tax benefits to do these deals and you dont to the deals, you are leaving money do the deals, you are leaving money on the table. Bad capitalist. Brian that is the debate. I think we as maybe im getting old but we as people who have been around a while have to show those coming behind us that Major Companies who can do great things can do it in a way where society and shareholders benefit. Jim collins in 1996 talked about the genius of the ant. If you talk about stakeholder capitalism, people say what do you think about that . Do you think it is good if you do great things for our clients . Oh yeah. Do you think it is good if you do great things for our teammates . For our shareholders . For our communities . That is stakeholder capitalism. How can you say that is bad . Dan i think Milton Friedman said it was bad. Brian heated and didnt he did and didnt. He says you have to deliver profits and purpose. The manifesto created at davos, he and milton had an intellectual debate about what they were going to say. Come forward a bunch of years, Major Companies were trying to run the business in the way that is right, which is showing how capitalism will solve these problems by driving that. It wont happen otherwise. Think about 190 countries signed on to the Sustainable Development goals. There arent many countries in the world past 190 something. They all signed. They told us what they want from the system. If you take 6 trillion a year, where is the money going to come from . We do 500 million of charity a year. All the Charitable Giving in a year is 1. 2 trillion. The art museums dont count, etc. Our governments run a trillion dollar a year structural deficit. They dont have any extra money. Where is it going to come from . All these businesspeople by employing and hiring good people. But do it in a way that delivers the profits they need to drive the company, plus pays attention to what else they do, doing the right thing for clients and communities. That is hard to argue. That is how we run our company. We are one of four companies in the u. S. Worth more than 15 billion. My guess is we will get nine. There are only four out of all the Companies Listed in the u. S. To get to that. You can do it. It can be big. Its the idea of doing both, the and, not or. When you do that, that 6 trillion can be found. You can have the Energy Transition by having the Oil Companies use their expertise and Steel Companies find the way they can get the hydrogen in place of coal by thinking through the transformation. You have to work with these companies. The debate is not to do business with exxon, how can we help Companies Make the transition or how do we help do great things for employees . We started a 46,000 a year company. We do that because it is in the interest of our shareholders to have a teammate who works for 50 years in our company. We have 200,000 people. 1 turnover. Six months, three months, pick a number. Each 1 . The difference between 15 and 7 , which is what we went back to after the great resignation, 7 is 15,000 people we wont hire this year. That is because of the career mindset. Dan coming back to this bigger question about the purpose of capitalism and the relationship that it has with democracy. The questions you were getting were from senators and house members asking you during committee hearings. It sounds from your point of view it is not a terribly productive question and there are others they ought to be asking. This is essentially a macro publicprivate partnership. What would you like to see our elected officeholders focusing their attention on . Dan make it concrete as opposed to theoretical. In the energy area, i work at a bunch of private companies. Its a bunch of people saying how do we think about this . All different industries. At some point we are asked to put our positions in front of the g7. I spoke to the g7. We dont need money was my opening phrase. We need permitting. You will not get this stuff built unless you get it permitted faster. It takes seven years to get a windmill from start to finish. It actually takes a lot longer. Everything going on now is from 2015 or 2016. Think of how little we talked about the Energy Transition then. Think of how much goes on today. Go out seven years and you will see numbers you cant believe. You have to take an asset that is going to be deployed seven years out, the economics change dramatically. You need help with your purchase power activity. An example is the u. K. Post office a great to buy a bunch of Hydrogen Powered trucks. Now they can figure out if they can sell it to other people. It starts to build a Hydrogen Facility and load the trucks. We asked them to reform the ndp. In developing countries, there are suppliers of capital. You want them to be risk takers. That is the kind of thing you make. That is the publicprivate partnership. These are all elected officials. You are saying, do these things and we can crowd in more private capital and it will take off. If you are trained to do a bunch of solar installation across multiple countries trying to do a bunch of solar installation across multiple countries in africa it is tough to do the geopolitical risk. That is how the partnership can work across democratically elected officials where they try to contain. The last thing is take the disclosure that we built from industry and use those and quit making us figure out 15 different patterns of disclosure. We spent all this time and effort trying to write down those disclosures as opposed to doing the work. Every time someone changes the rules you have to do a different thing in a multinational setting. You have to be pragmatic. The ira is a catalytic Investment Vehicle but it will take private money to make it work. There are research dollars. All the money will come from the people in this room. The tax credits and other things provide the catalyst. Dan we will get to questions from all of you in a second. I have like 18 but i had to choose one. What are you worried about . Brian we worry about everything. [laughter] we have 7000 teammates at risk. They help us with everything. The idea of a mild recession in the u. S. , some say it is optimistic and some say it is pessimistic. The idea of no recession has gotten more credence. The idea of mild recession in the u. S. Has some dependencies. Those are that the fed does not overshoot too far, that the ground war in europe, in ukraine does not get worse, does not escalate into other countries. China ends up taiwan and all that stuff does not go crazy and you have some sanctions. Those are things to depend on. If you keep europe and the u. S. Relatively stable, the World Consumers relatively stable, and the two biggest economies are stable, and if india is in pretty good shape and china hangs in there, a lot of the economic risk goes out. A lot of these have geopolitical risk you cant control. Dan Brian Monahan is ceo of bank of america. We are about to begin the audience q a. We welcome questions from everyone, city club members, guests, and those joining us via the livestream. If you are listening on the radio it is friday and this was prerecorded on thursday, so there are no questions from you. [laughter] if you would like to get a question in right now, tweet it or text it and we will work it into the program. May we have our first question, please . The first question is a text question. The millennial generations wealth is significantly behind generation x and boomers. They came of age during the Great Recession and sent back again during the pandemic. Some call them the unluckiest generation. Others see it as outcomes of policy set by older generations to hoard wealth. What are you seeing as opportunities for the largest generation in the country . What will happen to the countrys Economic Situation in 10 to 20 years if millennials dont catch up . Brian Research Platforms like ours all do this, which at any time you take a snapshot and the people of average age and up have more assets than the average age and down. I think that value transfers over time, it just does. It transfers by active versus passive earnings, it transfers by a lot of things. Going back to questions about capitalism, in this country there are entrepreneur opportunities for all people. You see millennials have created fabulous companies. These snapshots act as if everything stays the same for the same people over time. I have kids who argue about who is a millennial and who is not. If you look at that age bracket and think of where any of us were at that age, you would have a different view of your earning power. I think these things work. If millennials in this country will have a chance to participate and earn, they will have a chance in a phenomenal period of this countrys growth. What gives you confidence when the world says ai will take away jobs . There was a time before where we all sat as a country and had a lot of stuff going on that was not good. It was the late 60s. Japan was going to take over the United States, all the manufacturing. Everything went, the steel industry, ypu you pick it. You had political unrest. Martin luther king got assassinated. Bobby kennedy spoke here shortly after that. He got assassinated in early 68. The violence and unrest after that was bitter. We had the vietnam war. We had kent state, where the governor of a state ordered the National Guard to shoot the kids protesting. We had an impeachment, nixon, we had the war. We had the personal computer coming on. Peter drucker said there is no reason to have them because they just transfer information. Okay. How many people do you think worked in the United States in 1969 . 80 million. How many work today . About 160 million. Population of the u. S. Back then, 220 million. 80 Million People more went to work from 1969 to now. Women came into the workforce. That 100 million growth had a lot of immigration. That means you are not waiting 18 years. Everyone says do this in kindergarten, you have to wait 18 years. It takes 18 years to get to an 18yearold. That is fine. [laughter] all that took place. What happened from the personal computer to now is tremendous jobs were created. We had a constitutional crisis, the president had to resign. The war in vietnam, the College Campuses erupting, yet still here we are. That is the power of democratic puddle is. Long answer to a civil question, i guarantee millennials will have great prospects but it is because the system will do it. It will ebb and flow and some will have more and some will have less, but it is making sure people at the baseline have the highest standard of living in the world and can do whatever they want no matter if they went to college and let it rip. We have to make sure the people at the bottom live at the highest standard in the world. Thank you for coming to city club. What impact do you think cryptocurrency will have on the Banking Industry . Will it be an opportunity, a threat, or irrelevant . Brian there are two or three different parts to that. A part is moving money digitally. Today, even in our consumer business, about 60 of the money moves digitally. That doesnt count when you use your physical credit card. In the institutional space, everything moves digital in terms of dollar volume. That is 34 trillion a day. Money moves digitally. So what Business Case are these things trying to solve . From a currency perspective, the idea of moving money and instantaneous value is interesting. 24 7, kind of interesting. We as an industry, things like zelle are moving money. You dont care whether you have a coin or bank account, you as a customer want access to money. The credit card system is pretty good. You go to all these people you have never been in your life and hand them this piece of plastic and you get a nice dinner. [laughter] its pretty fantastic. You dont have to worry about anything. There are crossborder applications of small balance transfers. There is delay and settlement. We have a realtime system that the Bank Industry has. Ppp Payment Systems, zelle took care of that. Zelle transactions sent our customers exceed the number of checks written. You look at that and say what is the Business Case . Then there is the block chain itself. We are still trying to find out where the Business Applications are. [indiscernible] that is not a new concept, if you have a mortgage, a public ledger that says you have a deed to the home. Both of those are Public Record and it is irrefutable. That is what the block chain does, but in a whole different way. It can move documents. The actual currency question is one we are still try to figure out because meanwhile the electronic occasion of cash, we built this realtime system that will settle because if on the weekend you wanted to buy a car you had to have a person trust you and with a realtime Payment System in a 24 by seven wire system which the fed is building , and if they dont we will emulate it, i think you will get to the point where you can operate commerce all day long and sizable amounts. Basically the industry is tying together realtime systems around the world so that a verified bank account in spain and cleveland can Exchange Money and it will be like doing zelle with somebody else. When you go to other currencies it gets interesting. Dan seems dangerous. Go add. Mr. My nhan, how much of an impact do you think our Current Technology has, smartphones and social media, in accelerating the bank runs we had earlier this year, and how concerned are you about that in the future . Brian it is something we need to study further. I think it had more to do with the individual. The movement had to do with the customer group. A small number of customers have a lot of stuff. They communicate fast together. That is just the reality. That may change the nature of it. There are other factors, but digitization has changed everything. When you look elsewhere, it did not have an impact elsewhere so there had to be something unique to those companies because everybody has digital banking. That has to do with the nature of the Customer Base being very concentrated. Thanks for your wonderful comments on capitalism that puts profits and purpose together. I think that deserves a round of applause. [applause] brian it is not a new concept. But it is good that you are devoted to it. Environmental social governance and business practices, are they here to stay . Second, how helpful do you find it when attention seeking politicians attack those as a culture war issue . When will business investors decline to finance the campaigns of radical politicians who vandalize our democracies and communities . [laughter] dan you want to take those in order . Brian i will take the last one first. This is what democracy is all about. People have opinions and they run for office. I was in American History major and i had the Great Fortune of arriving with gordon brown, a Popular History professor at the time. David bailey, all these guys. Gordon wrote a lot about it. Even in the founding, this place had a lot of wildly different views. It has always been like that. That is why it works. It chops them up and source them out over time. We have to be careful that we dont do things, but going back to the heart of your question, we as companies strive for things important to our shareholders and customers. We cannot be strong in cleveland unless cleveland is strong. What we do around jobs or the arts is geared toward helping people understand the value of the arts. There is a great quote attributed to Winston Churchill. Like all Winston Churchill things, he may have said 20 of it. Hes going into parliament and carrying the red box and presenting the budget or whatever it is. They are getting bombed and spending every dollar on rationing and everything is going to the war effort. Someone says lets cut funding for the art museums. He basically said, what are we fighting for if we are going to cut that . Even the arts are critical to the success of great communities and rural towns, and now in virtual spaces. The idea of supporting all the things. As you make decisions, we make decisions that are important in that area. When you have 200,000 plus people and they have family members and you make decisions, we have people who believe everything politically in our company. We are all over the world, age groups, everything. You have to do what will help those teammates be successful. If you make your decisions on risk, what is good for the company, what is good for the shareholder . That is the point we are trying to make, this is capitalism done the right way. Then it will be people wont try to substitute another system in. That is the debate that makes me worry, someone thinks there is some other system that is definitively proven not to work that will do better. Go to an average College Campus and ask in the economics class what are their views of capitalism, it will be interesting. We have to give people why a bunch of any companies can do things the right way, that show you the value of capitalism. Because you would not have the great things you have in any place in america without that capitalist system. It over pollutes, it does this, employee safety, it gets regulated back. But you want to fix it before that. When it comes to regulation it goes past the point of pain. Every four years, experts talk about the effect of the president ial [indiscernible] this may be more volatile than other elections. I wonder if you can talk about what you foresee as the effect and your perspective on the correlation that americans make that one party is better than another, but where that perspective comes from . Brian usually when people are trying to cheer for one party over another is where the perspective comes from. The oldest part of our company was founded in 1784. When the election cycle the last few years came up, i used to say we have been around for some tough elections. That one in 1800 was really tough. [laughter] they made a nice show out of it. [indiscernible] he was brought up for treason. The president of the United States was brought up for treason after he left office. That is kind of interesting. The idea of a company like ours is to do the right thing, be consistent and mindful that the elected office comes and goes, b ut the people at the company will be here through the election cycles. You have to be consistent. Do you want people that see the valueof Free Enterprise capitalism . Yes. That does not mean it is restricted to one idea. I think the idea as the Business Community is make our advocacy known. We have to be part of the process to make sure things dont go in a way that does not make sense for prosperity. Be mindful that we also have to support, we have to help educate, help deliver. This is a wonderful company. Wherever you go in the world, the general ask of the Business Community by the political side is to help them be successful. That is not a hard ask to fulfill. But you cannot do it based on political, it has to be on what is good for society. I dont know how many prime ministers of the u. K. In my 14 years. Its not like they are not going to change. Our u. K. Business has 6000 people and i cant change it based on who is elected. The team has to run it on a consistent basis. [indiscernible] i can basically say lets go run the company the right way. Perhaps one final question around capitalism. Do you have any Guiding Principles as you are considering different strategies to implement the balance, the shortterm predictable gains that analysts are looking for versus creating longterm sustainable shareholder value . Brian oddly enough, the metrics i spoke about that the International Business council put up to meet the sustainable goals, we knew Accounting Firms could do this because they found 25 metrics that would prove we are doing what they want. In those metrics, that is what we look at. We originally built those as the debate in the short term. As a Business Community, the idea was we will force longterm, stuff that was not going to happen. If you show people that over time, you are accomplishing both a short and longterm. That is profits in profits, not profits in purpose. But you have to show people you are making progress. That was disclosure. Here is our diversity, how we pay our taxes, our scope one two emissions. You can see the progress or lack of progress. I think you can get out of the shortterm. When we think about the decision of the company, especially when you are always thinking multiple years out, our business does not move fast enough to do shortterm stuff. You talk about what we have done around teammates over the years, i started with a Management Team. In 2010 we had 285,000 people. We had 213,000 people at the end of this quarter. That sounds like we let attrition work. In that time, the starting wage has gone from 10 an hour to 22. The average wage has gone up by 25 . The ownership by employees is up by a lot. We did 4 billion or 5 billion of stock giveaways. With the change we made in the benefit plans in 2011 [indiscernible] we have never raised it. Its directly resulted in the turnover rate and entrylevel jobs dropping. That saves me a lot of money. The health and wellness stuff we do wont pay any money amongst the Management Team because it will save things 20 years out in terms of health care costs. It is the right thing to do for employees and families. You are always thinking about the longterm, shortterm. It is not as binary. There are things you do incrementally. A thing we did eight years ago before anybody knew what it was, now its 20 million customers. It is a very simple form of it. That. Was because we made it years ago it was based. On a customer decision we deployed it after a couple years. In our industry you are always making longterm decisions but you want to be consistent. You have to do both. This company has been around for 240 years. I will be here in a nanosecond in the life of it. Same with my Management Team, 30 years in the company. 30 out of 204 years 240 years is not a lot. You have to leave the wood pile bigger, that you asked me earlier if you would survive. I think you did ok. Brian moynihan. [applause] brian thank you. I would urge one thing, do something that drives capitalism and show people how it works right. Dan really glad we got to talk about that. We would like to thank bank of america for their partnership on todays forum. Thank you so much. Up next at the city club, tomorrow june 30 for the 2023 state of the county. It is a rescheduled event that was supposed to be yesterday. We had to shift it due to air quality. We are thinking good thoughts about our friends to the north, by which i mean canada, not michigan. [laughter] after the Holiday Weekend we will return on friday. Brian a bunch of people are going to come down from detroit. Dan after the Holiday Weekend we will return on july 7 to hear from a pastor of live free usa and Community Led efforts to reduce gun violence in our neighborhoods. You can learn more about these forums and others are c ityclub. Org. Thank you members and friends of the city club. Thank you Brian Monahan. Our forum is now adjourned. Office, this one is a bout five minutes