Jamie Dimon is at it again. The JPMorgan Chase CEO who inflated the housing bubble and helped cause the 2008 financial crisis that devastated millions of American families is now inflating the artificial intelligence (AI) bubble. Unless we learn from our past mistakes, we are doomed to repeat them. On October 14 Dimon will be the guest of the Economic Club of Chicago and we hope he is asked about his plan to protect Americans when his AI bubble bursts or Americans will be left holding the bag while big tech firms and banks once again make off like bandits. 

Chase is a major financier of AI data centers. It is lending AI firms money to build data centers in our backyards, increasing pollution in our communities and causing utilities bills to jump. Illinois consumers are paying 40 to 50 percent more for power than they did two years ago, and the regional grid’s own market monitor traced the spike in ComEd bills to demand from data centers.

Chase is also a major underwriter of the initial public offerings (IPOs) of AI firms like Anthropic and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. By giving these firms wildly inflated valuations untethered from economic reality, Chase and other big banks are putting the entire global economy in jeopardy, just as they did twenty years ago during the subprime lending boom. The banks collect their fees the day a loan closes or a stock lists. The risk is passed down to the rest of us. 

Billions of dollars in public pension funds are invested in JPMorgan Chase. That money is the deferred wages of teachers, janitors and other public workers. It should not be used to inflate the AI bubble. Intervening now means demanding our retirement fund managers stop investing in the AI IPOs, the tech corporations driving the data center boom, and the financial firms—like Chase—that are enabling them. 

We also need to ensure our taxpayer dollars are not used to do business with  these companies. Chicago has shown twice this year that this kind of pressure works. In August, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order establishing new ethical procurement standards for companies seeking to do business with the city. Working people called for this change to exercise the city’s purchasing power to support businesses that respect Chicago’s workers, communities, and values. Next the city should cut ties with corporations like Chase that are endangering our communities’ futures with their reckless business model.

We know we can push corporations to change their behavior by leveraging the power of our tax dollars and our retirement funds. Last month, we saw progressive alderpeople squeeze some accountability out of the privatized parking meter debacle to get the owner of the parking meters, Stonepeak, to divest from a company that flew ICE deportation flights. Sixty years ago the Rev. Jesse Jackson built Operation Breadbasket on the South Side on the belief that organized dollars could change how a company treated Black Chicago. Pension funds and city contracts are organized dollars. 

We have seen who pays when these bets go bad. Dimon made money hand over fist while his bank actively inflated housing costs in the mid-2000s. By targeting Black and Latine families with predatory loans and then bundling those loans and selling them to investors, Chase and the banks it later bought laid the groundwork for the 2008 financial crash. Those families were the miner’s canary. Between 2005 and 2009 the typical Black household lost more than half its wealth and the typical Latine household lost two-thirds. Then, thanks to the hundreds of billions in taxpayer bailouts and backstops that Chase was awarded, it emerged from the Great Recession as the nation’s biggest and strongest bank. 

Dimon is the only big bank CEO from the 2008 financial crisis to still have his job. Most of his peers were ultimately pushed out of their roles in relative disgrace, while Dimon's name was floated for Treasury Secretary under both the Biden and Trump administrations. Dimon has an uncanny staying power.

This time, we need to make sure our dollars are working for us. We can do that by holding Chase accountable for its role in creating the next financial crisis that threatens our livelihoods and our children’s futures. When Jamie Dimon speaks at the Economic Club of Chicago’s meeting on October 14, he will be talking to an invited audience. The decisions about our money are made at pension boards and in City Council, where the rest of us have a vote. That is where Chicago will send him a clear message that we will not let him gamble with our money again. Not with our money, not this time. 

Saqib Bhatti is the executive director of the Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE). Dorian Warren is the co-president of Community Change and a founder of Not With Our Money.