What keeps big bank CEOs up at night

What keeps the CEO of the biggest of banks awake at night? I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase has delivered his annual letter to shareholders. How a guy with that much money at stake views the economy and the world at this moment is useful information, Marketplace's Kaylee Wells reports. Jamie Dimon's cautionary tone struck Ari Schwader. He teaches economics at the University of Michigan. He's quite worried about inflation, not calming back down to the 2% level that the Fed wants, and I think rightly so. Rightly so, Schwader says, because of government debt and tariffs and fiscal stimulus. Add that to the supply chain and market uncertainty with war. That certainly affects banks' willingness to give out loans and then makes it harder for folks to get a mortgage to buy their house or to buy their car or things like that. Another concern in the letter, a growing percentage of loans come from hedge funds, private firms, not banks. These type of lending institutions are not under the direct supervision often by the Fed. Pavlina Cherneva at Bard College says, since they're not regulated like bank loans, there are new loan arrangements with delayed payments, with lower credit standards, and they're not immediately obvious to the regulator. The letter says private credit isn't posing a huge risk yet, but Cherneva says it could if it doesn't get regulated. I'm Kayleigh Wells for Marketplace. With just over 10 hours to go to the White House deadline for Iran to reopen a major sea route for oil, the price of crude very high, up 3% this morning, closing in on $116 a barrel. Thursday, we get a fresh reading on economic growth that had been running weak, but for a more immersive understanding of the economy, I recently took a long drive on 100-year-old Route 66 through parts both touched and untouched by the Artificial Intelligence Revolution. The pieces are accumulating at Marketplace.org. Who's at Booth Gardener of Washington State who said, change your career every seven years? He did aid as governor, but close enough. Now, if you switched it up, what would align with your skills and passions? Business envy is the series here. Yesterday, the coffee roaster in San Francisco so serious about beans they don't even sell coffee. Today, on a day, the Artemis crew flings back from the dark side of the moon. We turn to a business on the coast of Maine that makes rockets with fuel said to be non-toxic. Sasha Derry is founder and CEO of BlueShift Aerospace. Welcome. Thank you very much, David. It's a real pleasure to be here. You and your team are making rockets to do what? So we're making rocket propulsion systems to ultimately support research in space and to frankly take over solid rocket motors in the marketplace. Those motors are used for, you think of the space shuttle, strap-on boosters, but also for developing new hypersonic capabilities in the United States as well as ultimately reaching the stars. Where are you in development? I mean, can you do it now? So we launched a small prototype after a NASA grant back in 21. And the last several years, thanks to investors across the nation and also federal funds, we are on the cusp of launching our full-size engine in a suborbital space launch, probably from Space for America in the next 12 months. If all goes well, how high will you get? Will you cross the von Karman line and actually be in space? I know you're not going into orbit. Yes, that's right. So this is just a single engine configuration. We'll be going up to space, going back down. The goal is to at bare minimum make it beyond not only 80 kilometers, but beyond 100 kilometers. So the idea is to get above 100 kilometers, the Karman line, and ultimately go much, much farther, potentially up to about the altitude of the space station, of course, when it's not there. Now, to do what though? I mean, hoist smaller satellites, research, all of the above? Yes. So the opportunity is largely for research. This is to carry whether civil, academic, commercial experiments and technology up into space, into a relevant environment, provided with that zero-G experience, and do it longer than say Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin do it today. But also to prove out our engine's capabilities so that we can sell it to other markets where we can directly replace solid rocket motors, which are in severe shortage. People talk about an emerging space economy. It sounds like you are part of that emerging space economy. We really are. And I think we're in this really interesting era where something that was left to just governments has become now a growing industry for us here. Now, you talked about launching the next prototype from what is actually Western New Mexico, not too far from White Sands, Spaceport America. Could you launch on the Atlantic side of Maine? We certainly can. I think one of the things that is surprising, if not jarring, is that we can do it in part from Maine because of the non-toxicity of our propellant. So here in Maine, we really love the state that we're in, in part because of its beauty, of its natural landscape, because of the environment around us. And preserving that's really, I think, critical to any company that looks to do launches. And we can do that and say that if our rocket was just a tip sideways and just fall right into the ocean as opposed to launching, we know that we wouldn't be polluting the environment that we're in. Sasha Derry, Founder and CEO of BlueShift Aerospace near Brunswick, Maine. Thank you very much. Thank you. Now, I'm an amateur rocketeer and thought my K&L motors were big deals until I saw one of Mr. Derry's that has 75 times more power. Ever heard of a job so good you'd live for Monday mornings? Email us, the business Unv, using Marketplace Morning Report at marketplace.org. Morning Report at marketplace.org. That's how to get ahold of us and we'll read them. I'm David Bruncaccio. From APM, American Public Media. Poetry is one of the greatest tools we have. It offers a way to better understand our own lives and the lives of others. I'm Maggie Smith, poet and host of The Slowdown. Every weekday, I share one poem and a few minutes of reflection. Five minutes to breathe, to notice, to begin again. It's an easy ritual you can take anywhere. Your kitchen, your neighborhood, or your morning commute. Learn a new daily practice and listen to The Slowdown wherever you get your podcasts.