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We Got A Lot Of Excellent People And Businesses From Bear And Wamu. But Bear Definitely Was More Painful. Wamu Got Us Into Florida, California, And Other States, Which Was A Huge Benefit - To Expand And Grow And Add Middle-market, Private Banking, Investment Banking, And Other Products, Too.

-Jamie Dimon

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We Got A Lot

Jamie Dimon

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We Got A Lot Of Excellent People And Businesses From Bear And Wamu. But Bear Definitely Was More Painful. Wamu Got Us Into Florida, California, And Other States, Which Was A Huge Benefit - To Expand And Grow And Add Middle-market, Private Banking, Investment Banking, And Other Products, Too.

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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.

We Represent Companies From Around The World Who Say, "i Want To Look At Japanese Companies. I Want To Invest In Japan."

I Always Tell People, "there's A Book On Everyone." I Get Some Of That Book Before I Do Anything. If I Want To Deeply Understand Someone's Reputation, I'll Talk To Their Friends, Their Former Bosses, Their Peers, And I'll Learn A Lot About Them. I Want Them To Be Trusted. I Want Them To Be Respected. I Want Them To Give A S - -. Then There Are The Intangibles: Physical And Emotional Stamina, The Ability To Confront Issues. I Can Ask All I Want About Those Things, But I Also Have To See A Lot Of It.

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 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.

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.

Companies That Grow For The Sake Of Growth Or That Expand Into Areas Outside Their Core Business Strategy Often Stumble. On The Other Hand, Companies That Build Scale For The Benefit Of Their Customers And Shareholders More Often Succeed Over Time.

I Think Normalization Is A Good Thing.

On Wall Street, There Is No "wall Street"; There Are Individuals.

I Hope The Story Of 2011 Is That America Gets Its Mojo Back. You've Got To Remember That America Has The Best Universities; It's Got Some Of The Best Businesses. It's Got An Unbelievable Work Ethic, Rule Of Law. The Story Of 2011 Will Be America Blossoming Again.

The Goal Of What Japan's Central Bank Is Doing Is To Create Growth. If It Actually Creates Growth, In The Long Run, It Will Lead To Appreciation.

It's Good For America When The Rest Of The World Grows, Because You Can Sell More To The Rest Of The World.

Our Commercial Bank [jpmorgan] Is Only In The U.s. We Are Serving What You Call Smes - Small Businesses, Private Companies.

Commercial Banks

I Want Japan To Think And Say That We Are Better Off For Jpmorgan Having Been Here Through Thick And Thin.

I 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.

I've Always Wanted To Help Build A Better Society And Build A Better Company, And I Always Wanted A Healthy, Vibrant Company, A Healthy, Vibrant Society. We Take Care Of Our People, We Provide Them With Opportunity. But I've Always Believed Business Is Here To Serve Your Clients, Your Shareholders, Your Communities. If We Do This Well, Everyone Benefits. We Have To Do A Good Job For All Of Them.

A Lot Of These Things Have Hurt The Average American. When They Look At The Banks And They Say, "well, The Bank's Talking Its Own Game," I Am Telling You, What We've Done In Mortgage Lending, Our Inability To Have Proper Regulations Around Mortgages, Has Hurt Average Americans. First-time Buyers, Immigrant Buyers, Prior Defaults, Self-employed, Because They Can't Get A Mortgage. Will It Make A Big Difference To Jpmorgan Chase? No, But You're Hurting My Fellow Citizens. Let's Go At It, And Let's Fix It.

The Transaction Reflects Our Disciplined Strategy Of Investing Capital In Core Businesses Where We Can Leverage Scale And Expertise For Competitive Advantage. In Addition To Being A Great Strategic Fit, The Deal Is Compelling Financially.

That's Probably Good, All Things Being Equal, For Emerging Markets, Not Bad, Even Though It May Not Be Great For All Their Currencies.

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.

When The Government Gets Involved In Pricing, I Don't Think It's The Right Way To Look At A 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.

I Think Immigration Has Been One Of The Vital Things About The Growth Of America. I'm The Product Of Grandparents Who All Immigrated From Greece. I Hope Eventually We Have Proper Immigration.

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."

Commercial Banks

I Am Struck That So Many Of Our Leaders In The U.s. Forget How Strong Our Country Can Be.

[that Is] Hard To Predict, [it] Could Be Either September Or December [2016] I Personally Think The Sooner The Better Because That Would Be A Good Sign That The Fed Believes The Economy Is Significantly Stronger.

The Real Story In Housing Will Be A Recovery In The Economy That Will Drive A Recovery In Housing, When People Are Working, When There Are More Jobs, More Households Forming And People Go Back To Buying Cars, They're Going To Want Their Apartments And Homes. And That's When You'll Start To See A Recovery In Home Prices.

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.

Jp Morgan Always Has Higher Capital Liquidity, That Is Partially To Make Up For Mistakes And Problems And Obviously Its A Tough Economy. We Support An Oversight Committee, We Supported Some Of The Compensation, New Compensation Rules, Though We Already Follow Most Of Them. We Support A Lot Of It.

I've Always Been A ... Believer In Good Regulation.

I Don't Like The Term "universal Bank." The Chinese Government Legitimately Wants To Have A Very Strong Economy. When They Talk About Soe Reform, They Know That's Part Of It.

I Don't Think You're Going To Have One Bank. Big Companies Aren't Going To Give Us All Their Business. So They Can Pick And Choose - By Product, By Country, Whatever. We Have Major Competition Across Every Product In Every Place We Operate.

My Father And Grandfather Were Stockbrokers, And They Would Actually Take Stock Certificates From A Vault, Give It To A Runner, And Send It To Another Vault. Then Somebody Said, "let's Digitize It And Have One Vault." Now The Dtcc Clears And Settles Almost Everything, And The Cost Of Doing A Trade Is A Tenth Of What It Was Before.

You Read Constantly That Banks Are Lobbying Regulators And Elected Officials As If This Is Inappropriate. We Don't Look At It That Way.

Wall Street Gives Money To Both [democrats And Republicans] Because They Want To Be On The Good Side Of Whoever Becomes President .

Remember That Banks Aren't Markets. The Market Is Amoral. The Market Doesn't Care Who You Are. You're A Trade To The Market. The Market Will Sell You If They Think You're Riskier. Banks Didn't Do That

I Do Believe That Some Of These Regulations Made The Markets More Volatile, And It Remains To Be Seen How Bad That Can Be.

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.

Now The Japanese Companies Are More Focused On That. To Have Two Independent Directors - I Think It's Good To Have Outside People Look At You And Think Of What You Could Be Doing Better. Those Are Voluntary, But Most Of The Companies Told Me They're Going To Do It. And I Think It's Good For Them To Say Our Returns On Equity, For Example, Should Be Higher. Also, I Think Some Could Be More Ambitious.

Because Of That [brexit], You're Going To Have Slow Growth And, Unfortunately, While There May Not Be Huge Volatility, There Will Be Volatility.

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.

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.

At Travelers, We Were Much More Opportunistic. It Was Very Successful, But It Wasn't An Integrated Financial Services Company. We Had A Property Casualty Company, A Life Company, A Brokerage Company. We Were A Financial Conglomerate. It Wasn't A Unified, Coordinated Strategy Of Any Sort. When It Merged With Citi, That Became A Big Issue; Citi, At That Time, Wasn't Yet A Fully Integrated, Coordinated Company.

Don't Do Anything Stupd. And Don't Waste Money. Let Everybody Else Waste Money And Do Stupid Things; Then We'll Buy Them.

Japan, Europe, [and] America Probably [are] Better Than Last Year [2015], Not China.

Europe And America

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.

Part Of [japanese Companies] Growing And Expanding Around The World Is ... Going To Help The Japanese Keep Their Lifestyles [despite Japan's] Demographics, As A Declining Population, And [to] Make It More Conducive To Women To Go To Work, I Think, Is A Plus.

Around The World

If You Look At The Banking Business Over Many Years, It's Always Been A Huge User Of Technology. This Has Been Going On My Whole Life, That People Have Been Adding Technology, Digitizing Services.

I Am Not Embarrassed To Be A Banker. I Am Not Embarrassed To Be In Business.

We're Going To Do The Right Thing For The Company And Our Customers, All Things Considered.

We, Americans, Have The Best Country On The Planet. We Have Schools, Universities, Food, Water, Energy, Peaceful Neighbors, Low Corruption, You Name It, Deepest And Widest Capital Markets. That Doesn't Mean We Shouldn't Identify Problems. We Don't Have A Divine Right To Success.

We've Accommodated The New Rules And Regulations. We've Served Our Clients And Had Quite Good Returns.

Rules And Regulations

We Were A Land Of Opportunity. You Can Never Have Equal Outcomes, But You Can Have Equal Opportunity.

Equal Opportunity

If Business Doesn't Thrive, It Hurts America. We Need Improved Relations, More Collaboration, More Thought And More Consistency As We Go About Trying To Make Sure We Have The Best Country In The World. Not Scapegoating And Finger-pointing.

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.

We're Not Fair Weather Friends. We've Been In Places For A Long, Long Time.

I Hate The Word Universal, Because I Don't Know Exactly What It Means. The Question Is, Does It Work For The Client? Travelers Was A Diversified, Financial Conglomerate That Did Very Well. The Businesses Had Nothing To Do With Each Other.

You Don't Run A Business Hoping You Don't Have A Recession.

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.

You Cannot Prove This In Real Time, But When Economists 20 Years From Now Write A Book On The Recovery, It May Well Be Entitled, It Could Have Been Much Better.

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.

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?

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.

Let's Look At Lending, Where They're Using Big Data For The Credit Side. And It's Just Credit Data Enhanced, By The Way, Which We Do, Too. It's Nothing Mystical. But They're Very Good At Reducing The Pain Points. They Can Underwrite It Quicker Using - I'm Just Going To Call It Big Data, For Lack Of A Better Term: "why Does It Take Two Weeks? Why Can't You Do It In 15 Minutes?"

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.

You Have Your Own Culture And Your Own Ways Of Doing Things. I Hope Japan Continues On This Path.

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.

We Had A Lot Of Gridlock On A Lot Of Issues. But, The American System Is Pretty Resilient.

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.

If You Went To All Those Little Towns In America, Jpmorgan Was There In Good Times And Bad Times, And, In Fact, Helped A Lot Of People Through The Tough Times. And We Know That's When They Need Us The Most.

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.

Unraveling The Euro Is A Terrible Thing. This Is A 50-year Endeavor To Get This Continent Together And That's A Wonderful Endeavor.

They [chinese] Have Very Smart, Experienced People. I Don't Want To Paint Them All With The Same Brush. There Was A Little Bit Of A Feeling That The Stock Market, Which Went From Something Like $4 Trillion In Valuation To $10 Trillion, That The Chinese Wanted That.

Just Because We're Stupid Doesn't Mean Everybody Else Was.

Banks Also Have To Say No To Customers. We Can't Always Give Clients What They Want; It May Not Be In The Client's Best Interest.

Prime Minister Modi [narendra] Is Strong Enough, And He's Accomplished Much.

Just Because You Have A Good Hand Today Doesn't Mean It's Good Tomorrow. And Some Of The Things We're Doing May Become Very Disadvantageous At Some Point.

Acting Like Everyone Who's Been Successful Is Bad And Because You're Rich You're Bad, I Don't Understand It.

It Can Take A Long Time To Get The Rules In Place That Are Conducive To Growing, Sometimes.

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.

Economies Of Scale Are A Good Thing. If We Didn't Have Them, We'd Still Be Living In Tents And Eating Buffalo.

I Think If We Had Another Set Of Policies For - Not The Crisis Years, But After That, That We Might Be Growing Faster. But We Didn't. And Some Of That Was Republicans' [fault], By The Way.

The Trump Administration's Economic Agenda Is The Right Agenda. Corporate Taxes Have Been Driving Capital And Brains And Companies Overseas For A Decade. It Has Caused Huge Damage In Investment And Jobs And Productivity. It Was A Mistake. We Have To Fix It. Counterintuitively, That Usually Helps Middle-class Wages, And Lower-class Wages, And Job Formation.

All Businesses Tend To Pass Costs Onto Customers.

Jpmorgan Chase Are Among The Most Successful Global Investment Banks, Most Successful Global Asset Managers, And, In The United States, One Of The Most Successful Retail And Commercial Bankers. We Do A Great Job For Customers.

Good Regulation Should Be Conducive To Business And To Customer Protection.

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.

Men, Age 25 To 55, The Labor-force Participation Rate Is Down 10%. That's Unbelievable. There Are 35,000 Dying Of Opioids Every Year. Seventy Percent Of Kids Age 17 To 24 Can't Get Into The Us Military Because Of Health Or Education. Obesity, Diabetes, Reading And Writing. Is That The Society We Wanted? No. We Should Be Working On These Things, Acknowledge The Flaws We Have, And Come Up With Solutions. Not Democrat. Not Republican. Not Knee-jerk.

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.

My Guess Is The Big Chinese Banks Will Be In 100 countries By Then. They Will Have Very Sophisticated Operations, And They May Very Well Have Bought Banks Around The World In Countries That Allow It. I Mean, I Don't Think The American Government Would Allow Them To Buy Jpmorgan. But They Will Be Able To Buy A Sizable Big Bank In The U.s. At Some Point. Whether They Do Or Not, Or If It's Allowed Or Not, I Don't Know.

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.

We Invested In The Downturn And We Never Stopped Serving Our Clients.

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.

Commercial Banks

We Don't Think There Are Cases Where People Were Evicted Out Of Homes When They Shouldn't Have Been.

Any Good Job Is A Good Job. This Whole Concept Of A Dead-end Job? It's Not True. I've Heard It My Whole Life. Jobs Lead To Dignity. If You're Good At The First, Then You Can Get The Second. Jobs Lead To Household Formation. Jobs Are A Better Solution For Society.

Abenomics, Quantitative Easing, Fiscal Policy - We Know All The Issues.

My Daughter Asked Me When She Came Home From School, "what's The Financial Crisis?" And I Said, It's Something That Happens Every Five To Seven Years.

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.

You Would Expect To See That First In High-yield [debt], But It Was In The Most Liquid Thing In The World. So That, I Think - It's A Little Bit Of A Warning That We've Got To Be Prepared And Just Be Careful.

I Know The President [barack Obama]. I Like Him And Respect Him. That Does Not Mean I Agree With All Of Our Government's Policies, Whether They Come From Democrats Or Republicans.

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.

A Democracy Is A Compromise By Its Nature. It's Not A Dictatorship.

We Did Not Anticipate The Political Fallout From It. We Definitely Didn't Need It And We Paid It Back The First Day We Were Allowed To.

I Speak To Lots Of People Around The World, And No One Would Tell You That 25 Basis Points Will Make A Difference To Them.

Making A Difference

More People Are Working, Lending Is Up And Savings Are Up. These Are All Positive Signs For A Strengthening Economy.

I Do Think There Will Be More Japanese Companies Expanding Out Of Japan, And There Will Be More Cross-border Flow From Japan.

When The Secretary Of Treasury, The Head Of The Central Bank, The Head Of The Fdic (federal Deposit Insurance Corp.), And The Head Of The New York Fed Say, "we Want You To Do This Because We Think It's In The Best Interest Of The United States Of America," You Know, We're Like The Japanese. We're A Little Patriotic That Way. We Said, "yes, Sir!"

Part Of The Reason Some Japanese Companies Have Underperformed Financially Was Corporate Governance And Board Structures.

Jpmorgan Is A Very Good Franchise. And The Way You Should Look At A Franchise, A Business, Is From The Standpoint Of The Customers.

We Have A Lot Of People Who Are Republicans, A Lot Of People Who Are Democrats, And It's Not Just Because Of Business Reasons.

The "third Arrow" (of Structural Reform) Is Critically Important. Japan Has Some Of The Best Companies In The World, And If You Look At Their Technology, Their Capability, It's Extraordinary.

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.

Our Plate Is Full. We Have A Lot To Do Building Our Company Organically And That Is Our Key Focus.

If You Look At Detroit, That Mayor, It's Been A Train Wreck For 40 Years, The Population Has Gone From 2 Million To 700,000. This Mayor Comes In, And He Talked About Streetlights, Sanitation, Jobs, Policing, Schools, Affordable Housing. He's Doing It All, And It's Growing For The First Time In 30 Years. Literally, One Man. But That One Man Couldn't Do It Without Business. And Business Couldn't Have Done It Without A Political Environment Where They Wanted To Improve Things. If You Had An Antibusiness Environment There, It Would Still Be Down There.

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.

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.

We've Made A Huge Effort Globally And In The Us, In Getting Kids Jobs. This Is One Piece. The South Bronx And Inner-city Schools Need It More Than Most. It's Our Hometown; Jpmorgan Chase Banks A Lot Of People Here. If You See The School, It Works. Kids All Getting Jobs, They're Smiling, They're Proud Of Themselves. That's What We Need To Do In Inner-city Schools.

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.

Commercial Banks

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.

I Don't Think That [normalization] Necessarily Is Going To Damage The Emerging Economies.

India Is A Huge Democracy. Prime Minister [narendra] Modi Has Ambitions To Try To Fix The Infrastructure, The Rules, Taxes, Education, And To Lift Up The Indian People. And We're Hopeful That That's Going To Create Positive Momentum.

Europe Is The Most Complicated Place, In My Opinion.

I Advise Other Companies' Ceos, Don't Fall Into The Trap Where You Go, 'where's The Growth? Where's The Growth?' Where's The Growth?' They Feel A Tremendous Pressure To Grow. Well, Sometimes You Can't Grow. Sometimes You Don't Want To Grow. In Certain Businesses, Growth Means You Either Take On Bad Clients, Excess Risk, Or Too Much Leverage.

It's Hard In All Countries. Democracy Is Hard, But It's Better Than The Alternatives.

We're Trying To Win Business By Doing A Good Job For The Clients, As Opposed To, "we Think Being Big And Universal Is Just A Great, Wonderful Thing." It's Not A Morality Thing. It's A "does It Work For The Client?" Thing. Everything We Do Is Because A Client Uses Us. Everything We Do Is Because A Client Chose To Use Us Of His Own Free Volition.

You Never Know Exactly How New Policies Are Going To Work. That Doesn't Mean You Shouldn't Try Them.

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.

No One Can Forecast The Economy With Certainty.

People Always Say To Me, "what If It Doesn't Work?" If It Doesn't Work, We Redouble Our Effort. We're Not Going To Cry Like A Bunch Of Babies. We're Going To Redouble Our Effort.

There Are Parts [in Dodd-frank] That I Don't Agree With. But, In Total, It Is What It Is.

Look, In Any System, You Want Highly Ethical People Who Really Understand Issues To Form Policies And Make Tough Decisions. You Need All The Right People In The Room. But There's A General View In Washington Now By Many Politicians That If You Ever Were On This Side, You're Conflicted For Being On That Side.

The Yen Is Trading Where It's Trading Because People Are Guessing About People's Future Interest Rates, Dollar And Yen And About The Future Growth Potential Of The Economies. And, If This Policy Works, Then The Yen Will Probably Strengthen.

We've Seen The Volatility At Dollar-yen, U.s. Treasurys, Jgbs (japanese Government Bonds), German Bunds.

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.

It's Offensive To Me To Be Called A Cost Cutter.

The Question Is How Do You Do It [more Consumer Protection] So That It Actually Works That Way? And That Takes Analysis, And Sometimes Collaboration Between Government And Business, To Understand How That Works.

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.

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.

Manipulating Currencies Is When You're Going Into The Marketplace And Buying Something In Large Amounts To Depress The Value Of The Currency.

Buying Something

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.

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.

When People Talk About People Being Left Behind - Middle Wages Have Not Gone Up For Years, And We Should Recognize That, And There I Think We Need Growth And Skills - But There Are These Other People Who Have Been Left Behind. When I Say Out Loud, "fifty Percent Of Inner-city Schoolkids Do Not Graduate From High School," That Is A National Catastrophe. We Should Be Ringing The Alarm Bells. It's Not Fair.

The Government Has The Right To Change Laws And Rules And Regulations.

Rules And Regulations

We See Very Broad-based, Moderate, Growth. Most Of The Sectors Are Quite Strong. I Don't See Any Major Potholes, And I Believe [the Economy] Is Strengthening.

I Wanted To Start By Saying That The Eurozone - There Are Two Reasons They Formed The European Union. One Is For Political Peace And Rationalization. And I Think That's A Good Thing For A Continent That Went Through Hundreds Of Years Of Wars.

But In General, As Countries Get Wealthier, There's Going To Be More Savings, Which Means You're Going To Have Intermediation. So Part Of It Is Just The Huge Growth In Wealth, And Part Of It Was Globalization - These Companies, These Clients Getting Much Bigger And Much More Global.

The Best Way To Look At Any Business Is From The Standpoint Of The Clients. So There Are These Certain Basic Things That Aren't Going To Change. Companies Are Going To Have Needs For Equity, Debt, Advice, Fx, And Derivatives. Individuals Are Going To Have Needs For Auto Loans, Mortgages, Something That Looks Like A Deposit Account, And The Ability To Send Money To People. Those Things Aren't Going To Change.

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.

I Want You To Say To Me Right From The Start, "we Are Here To Serve Customers. We're Not Here For Me To Make A Lot Of Money. We're Not Here To Bet On Interest Rates Or Credit Spreads. We Are Here To Serve Our Customers Really Well Over A Long Period Of Time, And That's How You Build A Successful Business." And So I Want To See That, Too, You Know?

It Takes 10 Years To Get All The Permits To Build A Bridge Today. Ten Years? What Happened To The Good Old Can-do America? Where Is "we Get It Done, We Work Together"? We've Become This Bureaucratic, Stifling Environment. I'm Not Talking About Violating Environmental Things - I'm Talking About Building A Bridge, Getting Things Going, Getting People To Work Together.

Working Together

I Also Believe That Most Of The Emerging Economies Have A Fairly Large Amount Of Foreign Exchange Reserves, Relative To 10 Years Ago.

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.

It's Great That People Get Together And Collaborate, Talk About The Facts And The Analysis, All In The Interest Of Having A Great Financial System.

I Don't Mind Paying Higher Taxes, Because I've Done Quite Well And I'm Blessed To Live In This Country.

The Toughest Are People Mistakes, When You Put The Wrong Person In A Job. Sometimes You're Too Slow To Move Them Out. Or Not Getting The Right People Involved To Solve A Problem, Or Doing Something Out Of Anger; You Learn, Just Don't Do That. But I'd Have To Say The Whale Was One Of Them, And I Would Also Have To Put Bear Stearns And Washington Mutual On The List At This Point.

And If You're Going To Be A Leader, You Know What I Ask Myself? Would I Want To Work For You In This Job? Would I Let My Children Work For You? Would I Give You This Job If I Wasn't There To Provide Oversight? If You Went To Run Another Company, Would I, As An Investor, Invest In That Company?

I Believe It's A Good Thing That People Say, "can We Find A Way To Live Together In Peace?" And They Did, For The Most Part.

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.

There Is A Lot Of Focus On That First Rate Move, And I'm Not Sure How Important That Is.

We Continued To Build The Business, Even In The Worst Of Times. We Do Business All Over America.

We Got A Lot Of Excellent People And Businesses From Bear And Wamu. But Bear Definitely Was More Painful. Wamu Got Us Into Florida, California, And Other States, Which Was A Huge Benefit - To Expand And Grow And Add Middle-market, Private Banking, Investment Banking, And Other Products, Too.

We Take Smaller Companies And Middle-sized Companies, All Around The World, And We Do Currency Exchange For Them; We Raise Bonds And Equities For Them; And We Do Inventory Finance, Trade Finance, And Custody Of Assets.

No One Has The Right To Not Assume That The Business Cycle Will Turn! Every Five Years Or So, You Have Got To Assume That Something Bad Will Happen.

The United States Has The Best, Deepest, Widest, And Most Transparent Capital Markets In The World Which Give You, The Investor, The Ability To Buy And Sell Large Amounts At Very Cheap Prices. That Is A Good Thing.

I'm Not Going To Name Anybody, But I Think There Are About Five To 10 Global Institutions That Will Emerge As Our Primary Competitors Across The Board. They're Adjusting To This New World, Like We Are.

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.

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.

If The Economy Grows, Housing Gets Better, Quicker.

Businesses Can Be Opaque. They Are Complex. You Don't Know How Aircraft Engines Work Either.

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.

I Think The Republicans Have Really Thoughtful Financial Policies, And I'm More In The Middle On Taxation.

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.

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.

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.

I Was A Normal Human Being, But I Did Like That. I Read A Lot. I Also Liked Math And Science.

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.

You Know, The Benefit In Life Is To Say, 'maybe You Made A Mistake, Let’s Dig Deep.'

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.

You Can Design A Mortgage System That Is Different Without A Fannie And Freddie, But There Are Principles You Have To Have, To Have A Good System.

I Completely Agree With The Concept That American Citizens Shouldn't Expect That A Failure Of A Bank Would Cost Them Money, Or That It Would Hurt The Economy.

I Am Still A Democrat. The Main Reason Is Because I Don't Like The Republican Stance On Some Social Values. Not That I Disagree With All Of Them. I Just Don't Think They Have A Right To Impose It Upon Other People. I've Been Public About That.

The Term "too Big To Fail" Must Be Excised From Our Vocabulary.

We're Diversified, We're Stable And Consistent. Our Businesses Benefit From Each Other.

I Do Want The Tax System To Be Efficient And Be Conducive To Growth, Which It Is Not.

The Country [india] Is Doing Far Better.

If I Ran The Whole Place Like It Was My Way Or The Highway, We Would Not Be As Good A Company. I'm Going To Have Mistakes - They'll Be Made On My Watch And Will Embarrass Me. But I'll Also Make Sure The Company Learns From Them So It Can Become A Better Company.

If It Is A Small Rate Raises, [there Will Be] No Impact.

Dodd-frank Is 2,000 Pages Long. It Covers Thousands Of Rules, Regulations, Interpretations And Things Like That.

There Are Two Types Of Depreciation. There Is One Where You're Manipulating Currencies. And That's Not What Japan Is Doing.

It's Moderate Growth, With Some Parts Of The World Better Than People Think, And Better Than Last Year [2015].

We've Had Fairly Consistent Financial Results.

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.

I Think The Politics Have Gotten Better In The United States, Which Makes It Easier To Pass Legislation, Budgets And Treaties.

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.

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.

If The Government Wants To Do Social Policy, It Should Not Be Done In A Quasi-public Company. If You Have A Mortgage Guarantee Company Which Is Done By The U.s. Government, It Should Be Guaranteed By The Originators, I.e., The Shareholder.

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.

Companies That Build Scale For The Benefit Of Their Customers And Shareholders More Often Succeed Over Time.

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.

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