A democracy is a compromise by its nature. It's not a dictatorship.

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.

They'll [China] probably be a fully developed nation. The road there just is not going to be that easy. You're going from a macromanaged, top-down economy to a market-managed, micromanaged type of economy, with all the potential corruption issues, SOE [state-owned enterprise] reform, and market reform that come with it.

I learn from all our major competitors, whether they're in or out of the U.S. Wells Fargo is very actively, very aggressively, and very successfully building its U.S. investment bank.

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

Banks don't want certain asset classes, and that's created opportunities for private equity, hedge funds, Silicon Valley. In this case I think he was referring to some of the European banks shedding assets, and the big buyers are probably not going to be big American banks. Someone like Blackstone may have a very good chance to buy those assets, leverage them, borrow up a little bit, and do something good there.

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.