JPMorgan chairman Jamie Dimon praised SF's crime turnaround and opposed California's Prop 40 wealth tax at a Chase Center event — while his bank sits long on the city, and quietly cut 1,300-plus SF jobs after absorbing First Republic.

Jamie Dimon spent Monday afternoon on the floor of the Chase Center telling San Francisco it had turned a corner — from inside an arena that carries his own bank's name. JPMorgan Chase's chairman kicked off the bank's annual bus tour on Aug. 3 at its "San Francisco: Capital of Opportunity" event, in a fireside chat with SF Standard editor-in-chief Kevin Delaney. He credited Mayor Daniel Lurie by name for progress on crime, argued that "failed policy" — not big business — caused the city's bad schools and street conditions, and said "you don't fix problems when you deny them."

The optimism was also a man talking his book. JPMorgan is long San Francisco. It announced the same day that it would commit nearly $200 million to finance a 342-unit project at the old Potrero Power Station — part of a $750 billion national housing pledge it's running through 2035. It hosts its marquee healthcare conference in Union Square. And it absorbed First Republic's Bay Area book when the FDIC seized that bank in May 2023 and sold it to JPMorgan for $10.6 billion.

That absorption is the part of the record the booster tour skips. Since the deal, JPMorgan has cut more than 1,300 First Republic jobs in San Francisco and moved to vacate 244,000 square feet at 1 Front Street — shedding local footprint even as Dimon tours the city selling its comeback.

The tone itself is a reversal. Two years ago, in a Fox News interview that made City Hall wince, Dimon called SF in "far worse shape" than New York. Monday was the upgrade — though he never revisited the old line.

The policy he'd still fight: California's Proposition 40, the 5% one-time tax on billionaires that qualified for the Nov. 3 ballot with 980,438 signatures — aimed at the AI fortunes inflating the rents Dimon calls a "supply-side problem." He likened it to failed wealth taxes in France and Germany. On AI, he conceded "these numbers will reverse at some point," comparing the moment to the dot-com bust.

What's unsettled: whether Prop 40 survives November, and whether the reversal Dimon predicts arrives before the housing math improves. He was mum on his own next act, too — floating a "media or educational organization" and ruling out a "quixotic" run for president.