From my point of view, the American financial system - including banks and investment banks - is far safer because of capital and liquidity requirements. Despite all the turbulence so far this year, I don't think anyone's questioning our system. And that, obviously, is a good thing.

You never know exactly how new policies are going to work. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try them.

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.

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.

People need to understand: Businesses are going to make mistakes. They shouldn't be shot and hung every time. We should apologize for it. We should make up for it. My shareholders paid for it. No customer was hurt, which is critical to me. But I hurt my shareholders, and I wish I hadn't.

If you can't use dividends, it's not a bad thing to give it back to your shareholders. They'll use it somewhere else.

Don't do anything stupd. And don't waste money. Let everybody else waste money and do stupid things; then we'll buy them.