Jamie Dimon Quotes

Usually, something that is fairly expected is already factored in. I also think that you have to think that America is raising rates because the economy is getting stronger.

If you were a corporation needing financial services, and I can give you something better, faster, and cheaper across 12 products as opposed to eight, that's business. I'm doing it because I'm serving you; I'm not doing it because I want to be universal.

That's probably good, all things being equal, for emerging markets, not bad, even though it may not be great for all their currencies.

We've had fairly consistent financial results.

On Wall Street, there is no "Wall Street"; there are individuals.

I haven't studied it deeply, but the American banks started the crisis with far more capital and what I would call "good liquidity." The riskiest funding is unsecured wholesale funding. It's the most fickle. Not repo, which the government focused on, too. Unsecured. JPMorgan Chase had almost none of that - virtually zero.

When the government gets involved in pricing, I don't think it's the right way to look at a business.

I think the free-enterprise system has been great for society. That doesn't mean it's completely perfect. And also, when people say capitalism, I'm not really sure what they mean.

I agree with people who say we want more income equality; we want more consumer protection; and we want sounder banks. I agree with all that.

It's moderate growth, with some parts of the world better than people think, and better than last year [2015].

We have built a very good company, and we're proud of it. We also recognize that much of it has been built on the shoulders of the thousands of employees and leaders who have worked here before us.

When you leave people behind, and those people who are left behind, it's not their fault, it's the leaders of the institutions. There's always going to be an elite. You can have an elite in a communist society. It is the leaders, something went wrong, and the leaders collectively are responsible.

I've been regulated my whole life. We have progressive taxes. It's not a free-market free-for-all. I completely understand that society has a perfectly legitimate right to put in structures and regulations and rules that make it fairer, better, cleaner.

Part of the concept of the euro zone was to establish a common market. The banks were going to bank across all their countries like we bank across states. But that concept got killed for a whole bunch of reasons that I won't get into. That was a good concept, by the way. It may yet return, because there are huge economies of scale in banking. That's another thing people don't quite get.

Not every company went bankrupt. Not every bank needed TARP [Troubled Asset Relief Program]. So I'm very proud that JPMorgan, throughout that time period, was completely steadfast. We bought Bear Stearns because we thought we were helping the situation. We didn't cut and run.

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.

As a matter of fact 25% of our U.S. investment banking business comes out of our commercial bank. So it's a competitive advantage for both the investment bank - which gets a huge volume of business - and the commercial bank because the commercial bank can walk into a company and say, "Oh, if you need X, Y and Z in Japan or China, we can do that for you."

If you talk to anyone involved in business - forget banks and big business - talk to small businesses - do it yourself, don't ask me - they'll tell you it's crippling. Small-business formation is the lowest it has ever been in a recovery, and it's really for two reasons. One is regulations and the second is access to capital for people starting new businesses.

Manipulating currencies is when you're going into the marketplace and buying something in large amounts to depress the value of the currency.

Capping the size of American banks won't eliminate the needs of big businesses; it will force them to turn to foreign banks that won't face the same restrictions.

Over the longer term, China will grow by about 6% or 7% per year. The Chinese authorities usually react pretty quickly to unfolding economic events, and you've seen them recently change a whole bunch of policies to be more conducive to growth. They have the power and capability to macromanage the economy - to accomplish their growth objectives - which means they're pretty much going to come close to what they say is going to happen.

If you're making all your money simply betting on interest rates, that's not a business. Flow is a business. On the outside, they look the same for a while. But when you dig into them, no, they weren't exactly the same.

There are two types of depreciation. There is one where you're manipulating currencies. And that's not what Japan is doing.

It is vital for officials and regulators to have input from people within our businesses who understand the intricacies of how financial markets operate and the consequences of certain policy decisions.

Businesses can be opaque. They are complex. You don't know how aircraft engines work either.

I don't think you could have a banker serving in a major role in Washington in the next 10 years. I just don't think it's going to happen - it's just not politically feasible - so I don't spend much time thinking about it. Do I think I could do a good job? Maybe. It's possible.

A bank is a relationship. I can't desert you and expect to have a strong relationship afterward. If I told someone, "I know you've been buying milk from me and you need milk to survive. But the price is no longer $2 a gallon. It's going to be $40 a gallon. I'm going to bankrupt you." What do you guys think of me? You would hate us.

They have a policy in China for their big companies called "Go abroad." It's a rational thing for both the company and the country to say, "We want big, successful companies." Particularly in areas where they need it: agriculture, energy, technology. I think banking, too. One or two have bought a trading house. Some have already begun expanding around the world. Of course they're going to have those ambitions. Why wouldn't they? They're just doing it methodically. It's a logical strategy and, well-executed, they will succeed.

After the tsunami in Japan, we were open for business. In fact, I flew there 10 days after the tsunami to show our support for the Japanese people.

I think what you've seen them do recently in the markets is what most of us learn doesn't ultimately work. But I think everyone has to figure that on their own.

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.

Most CEOs are patriotic and most CEOs can see the problems in front of them, and they want to do something about it. We don't always agree about the ways and means, but the objective? We're totally together.

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.

Dodd-Frank and independent actions of banks go a long way in terms of progress on capital, liquidity, transparency, "living wills" (plans for winding down a bank in the event of a collapse) and resolutions.

I also think you have to be very careful. I mean, the heritage of our company is very strong, and building some of these businesses into leading players is extremely tough. You and I can both build a trading business, and it looks like you're doing OK, and it looks like I'm doing OK. But, really, I am, and you aren't. It comes down to the quality of clients, quality of systems, quality of risk controls.

I'm a really big believer - this is not a statement about President [Barack] Obama, but whoever is president - that good policy is really important.

Look, every institution will make mistakes. I acknowledge we make mistakes, and they can hurt my reputation and our company's. But you also must be willing to let go a little bit, trust others, and not always be so stringent, provided you have robust controls.

We do all that [ represent companies], because we have a lot of research in Japanese companies, and that research educates investors around the world. It allows us to sell stocks and bonds in Japanese companies.

Companies that build scale for the benefit of their customers and shareholders more often succeed over time.

It's an advantage for both parties to have the other. It also creates good stability of earnings. Our business mix means we have a diversified earnings stream, which is one of the things why we got through the tough times so successfully.

We were a land of opportunity. You can never have equal outcomes, but you can have equal opportunity.

We continued to build the business, even in the worst of times. We do business all over America.

The best thing to do is muddle through and maybe, over time, create a solution of that, if someone really wanted to exit, the legal basis on which you could exit. Because right now there almost doesn't exist one.

I have gotten disturbed at some of the Democrats' anti-business behavior, the sentiment, the attacks on work ethic and successful people. I think it's very counter-productive.

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.

We can take our Japanese clients around the world. We can take them to Brazil, Europe, anywhere. And we also take companies from around the world into Japan.

The economic union - creating a big common market, like the United States, so that you can compete across borders. There are common rules, regulations, and simplification, and that is still a good reason, too. When they put their monetary union together, that created a rigidity that made it hard for currency fluctuations. They don't really have a solution to that.

There are parts [in Dodd-Frank] that I don't agree with. But, in total, it is what it is.