Jamie Dimon, like his counterpart at Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett, has long used his shareholder letter as a platform for expounding on business and industry issues, challenges and opportunities.

This year he expanded on that platform in a way that has caused many in and around the industry to take note: a 29-page missive that tackles, among other things, how the economy tanked and what policymakers should do to fix it. Indeed, the letter amounts to pointed advice to regulators, lawmakers and other players deliberating over how to reform the financial services industry. It also supplies a blueprint for managing the kind of risks that hobbled "systemically important" banking, insurance and related companies, bringing the industry to its knees.

The missive comes not only as Dimon's influence is mounting but also as that of many other financial industry executives is waning. With the entire sector under duress and many of his fellow CEOs preoccupied simply with survival, no other banking executive is better positioned to represent the industry's interests.

"Dimon is probably the most credible CEO left in the top four" banking companies, said Christopher Whalen, managing director at Lord, Whalen LLC's Institutional Risk Analytics. "If you are the CEO of a company right now and you see the whole industry under some degree of nationalization, you as the strongest guy in the group ought to be saying something. CEOs are much more credible than lobbyists."

At least some CEOs are. Dimon, by contrast with many corporate peers, is credited with steering JPMorgan Chase through an unprecedented crisis; his $2.2 trillion-asset company has escaped much of the debilitating fallout affecting other financial institutions.

"Jamie Dimon would've made the old man proud," said Jeff Davis, a senior vice president and director of research at Howe Barnes Hoefer & Arnett Inc., referring to the late 19th century financier who gave the company its lead name.

A JPMorgan Chase spokesman said Dimon drafted the letter himself during the last several months, a clear sign that it is no ordinary communique aimed at soothing nervous investors. The letter's breadth of focus caught some observers by surprise. It contrasts with the relatively brief, perfunctory shareholder letters issued by the heads of Citigroup Inc., PNC Financial Services Group Inc., U.S. Bancorp and other big banking outfits.

"It was more of a book than a letter," said William B. Smith, the president and chief executive of Smith Asset Management Inc., which owns about 30,000 shares of JPMorgan Chase. "This is a little bit out of character, going to the length he did."

The approach is closer to Buffett's famous communiques to shareholders of his Berkshire Hathaway Inc., in which the "Wizard of Omaha" pronounces on a range of topics. Duff McDonald, a journalist writing a book on Dimon titled "Last Man Standing," noted the banker's admiration for Buffett, adding that Dimon's latest shareholder letter "is clearly his most ambitious and impressive to date."

That ambition, as Dimon explicitly admits, is to shape U.S. financial policy.

"Regulation will be written soon, in the next year or so, that will have an enormous impact on our country and our company," Dimon wrote. "During a crisis, people panic. This can make it harder, not easier, to do the right thing. From our perspective, certain improvements would make a big difference."

Dimon begins the letter with a fairly boilerplate analysis of his company's performance in 2008 and an overview of its high-profile acquisitions of Washington Mutual Inc. and Bear Stearns. Though earnings were down 64% last year, Dimon notes that JPMorgan Chase's strong balance sheet and conservative business practices "enabled us to weather this terrible environment."

The document's heart is a six-point exegesis of the economic meltdown, with solutions to avert calamities. Key improvements he recommends include tightening underwriting standards in the securitization market and creating a systemic risk regulator to act across a range of industries.

Notably, Dimon rejects the idea that the roots of the financial crisis lie in institutions considered "too big to fail." He wrote, "Size is not the issue; rather, it is when institutions are too interconnected that an uncontrolled failure has the potential to bring the whole system down. What we need is a resolution process that allows failure without causing damage to the whole system."

Dimon also underscores the importance of regulators' anticipating risk and acting before risks metastasize into a crisis.

"A systemic regulator, had it been closely watching the mortgage industry, might have identified the unregulated mortgage business point as a critical point of failure," Dimon said.

Such candor, a Dimon hallmark, is essential now, Whalen said. CEOs, "they all hide. It's pathetic. I applaud that he talks about these things."