Companies are returning a lot of money to shareholders through dividends and buybacks. And a lot of people say that's not a good use of capital. I think that's normal reallocation of capital.
Jamie DimonIf you can't use dividends, it's not a bad thing to give it back to your shareholders. They'll use it somewhere else.
Jamie DimonOur 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.
Jamie DimonI think one could argue that there's more political input into the regulatory side, and on the regulatory side there seem to be fewer people with financial and banking experience - there are more lawyers, academics, economists, maybe politicians now.
Jamie DimonNot 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.
Jamie DimonTheir [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.
Jamie Dimon