Jamie Dimon, the silver-haired avatar of late-stage systemic decay, is apparently bored of presiding over a mere multi-billion-dollar empire. He wants a trillion. According to the latest drivel masquerading as financial journalism, JPMorgan Chase is eyeing a trillion-dollar valuation, a milestone that would effectively turn a bank into a sovereign entity—one without the inconvenient responsibilities of having a flag, a border, or a conscience. It is the ultimate goal in the 'Number Go Up' game that keeps the global economy from realizing it is actually a hollowed-out carcass being puppeted by algorithms and the sheer, unadulterated hubris of a man who views the world as a series of spreadsheets.

The press, in their infinite thirst for proximity to power, recently interviewed Dimon and his ‘lieutenants.’ The word ‘lieutenant’ is particularly telling. It’s a term usually reserved for war criminals, organized crime syndicates, or the high-ranking officers of a regime currently liquidating a neighboring state. In the context of JPMorgan, it fits perfectly. These are the hand-picked sycophants and financial gladiators waiting for the king to either ascend to a higher plane of existence or finally succumb to the weight of his own self-importance. They speak the language of 'market dominance' and 'capital efficiency,' which are really just polite, boardroom-approved synonyms for an extinction event. They don’t want to serve the economy; they want to be the economy.

On the Right, the usual suspects are already polishing Dimon’s boots with their tongues. To the 'free market' devotees—who wouldn’t know a free market if it foreclosed on their mother’s house—Dimon is the ultimate 'Great Man.' They see a trillion-dollar bank and hallucinate the smell of 'Freedom.' It’s a bizarre form of Stockholm Syndrome where the hostage falls in love with the person charging them 29.99% interest on a credit card. They view this march toward a trillion-dollar monopoly as a triumph of American ingenuity, ignoring the fact that this 'ingenuity' largely consists of being too big to fail and having a direct line to the Federal Reserve’s printing press whenever the casino floor gets a little too rocky. They worship the man because he is the physical embodiment of the greed they wish they had the talent to execute.

Meanwhile, on the Left, we are treated to the usual performative seizure. They will tweet scathing critiques of wealth inequality from their $1,200 smartphones, using platforms owned by other billionaires, while their own 401ks are quietly tethered to the very institution they claim to despise. They demand 'regulation' as if the regulatory bodies aren’t just a revolving door for JPMorgan’s mid-level management to play dress-up in government drag for a few years before returning to the mother ship for a seven-figure bonus. The Left’s outrage is a choreographed dance, a ritualistic whining that changes nothing because, at the end of the day, they are just as terrified of a world without Dimon’s liquidity as the bankers are. They hate the king, but they’re addicted to the crumbs from his banquet table.

Let’s be clear about what a trillion-dollar bank actually represents. It is the final stage of financial alchemy, where money ceases to have any connection to reality—to goods, services, or human labor—and becomes a self-replicating virus. Dimon has spent decades navigating the ruins of smaller institutions, absorbing their corpses like a corporate John Carpenter’s 'The Thing,' until there is nothing left but a singular, bloated mass. This isn't about banking anymore. It’s about total institutional capture. When you control a trillion dollars, you don’t lobby the government; you are the government. The presidency becomes a middle-management position, and the citizenry becomes a demographic to be harvested for overdraft fees.

The tragedy of this situation isn't just the sheer scale of the greed; it’s the utter lack of imagination involved. Dimon and his lieutenants are not building anything new. They aren't solving the climate crisis, they aren't curing diseases, and they aren't advancing the human species. They are simply perfecting the art of moving decimals from one side of a ledger to the other. It is the intellectual equivalent of a child playing with blocks, except the blocks are the livelihoods of millions and the child has the power to crash the global food supply if his quarterly earnings don't meet expectations. We are all living in a simulation where the high score is the only thing that matters, even as the hardware is melting in the server room. A trillion dollars won't make Dimon happy, but it will make the rest of us significantly more irrelevant. And in the end, that’s the point. The bank doesn’t want your money; it wants your submission.