Top 262 Quotes & Sayings by Jamie Dimon - Page 5

JPMorgan was already, for the most part. Our businesses at JPMorgan share the same cash-management systems. The commercial bank, the private bank, the retail bank, they all use the branches. The cash-management system moves the money around the world - for global corporations, and for you, the consumer, too.

Our global corporate investment bank competes with Goldman Sachs, Citibank, and a bunch of other banks that are in those businesses. We may have slightly different products or services, but so what? That's always been true in American business.

We use technology to make it cheaper, better, and faster for the client. And then if you have the most flow, you can win. Now, having said that, Silicon Valley wants to take on this business. They think they see an opening.

Their [American banks] big issue will be if they want to deal with the biggest companies, which are doing a lot of business overseas. How they do that is a big question. It's almost impossible to build a global investment bank from scratch. If they want to do that, they probably will have to do an acquisition.

When you walk into a store and you want to buy something, you give them cash and they sell it to you. But very often, you walk into our "store" and you want something - a credit card, maybe, or a loan - and very often the answer is "No," even if you're a large corporation.

Our investment bank looks like it does because its customers like our expansive network and want to do equity, debt, M&A, custody, move money, deposit money, et cetera.

One of the issues with some of these lenders is going to be, where will their provider of credit be when there's a crisis? That's why some of these smarter services, to support their operations, are courting more permanent capital. They want a source of longer-term funding that can survive a crisis.

We don't think there are cases where people were evicted out of homes when they shouldn't have been.

The government isn't going to say, "We're going to regulate banks, but we'll leave these other companies alone." I think the regulators want to make sure that they have some form of regulation on anything systemic. We like our hand. But, you know, honestly, who owns the future?

My operating assumption is we will always have very tough competition. And even with some European banks struggling right now, some of them can reemerge - and maybe even stronger.

If you have the choice, it's far better to say, "That person has the job, and they really don't need that much of my oversight." Maybe they don't need any of it.

If the numbers are right, ICBC [Industrial & Commercial Bank of China], which already earns nearly twice as much as JPMorgan. They'll probably be going a lot faster over time, and one day they can be a lot bigger than us.

I've asked our people, "Why don't we just put a revolver on top of our basic loan?" Make it easier for the client.

I think the way NOW characterized Smith Barney is disgraceful. I am appalled that an organization like that would not have reserved judgment (until) making their own investigation.

It might be harder for us to charge a higher interest rate, like they do, so it might not be as profitable for us. But we can either compete or partner, like we've announced with On Deck, which does some of the stuff we just spoke about.

As countries get wealthier - all of them, together - you're going to have financial assets. That is a good thing. You could argue the assets were traded too much, or that they're too highly valued, or too leveraged.

I was a normal human being, but I did like that. I read a lot. I also liked math and science.

You've seen certain credit type products that are going to be in nonbanks, like sophisticated CLO [collateralized loan obligation] tranches and stuff where the capital charge is so high that a bank simply will not own it. Someone will buy it, hedge it, trade it. But it won't typically be a bank.

Finance went from being a small business, effectively, to being a big business. In part, that's the growth of the world's wealth. That's called savings.

Well, if you were the American public, you saw a catastrophe. In general, you would say, "The biggest institutions of America - Washington, broadly, and Wall Street, broadly - they're to blame." And, broadly, they're right.

People thought they were going to make a lot of money. And then at one point, it got too hot, and the government wanted to knock it down. Trying to get it up and then knock it down, both were a mistake. And part of the reason, some people think, is that they wanted to equitize some of their companies. A healthy stock market helps equitize companies and reduce the country's debt burden.

Just because we're stupid doesn't mean everybody else was.