Jamie Dimon
Jamie Dimon
James "Jamie" Dimonis an American business executive. He is chairman, president and chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase, largest of the Big Four American banks, and previously served on the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Dimon was named to Time magazine's 2006, 2008, 2009, and 2011 lists of the world's 100 most influential people. He was also named to Institutional Investor's Best CEOs list in the All-America Executive Team Survey from 2008 through 2011...
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth13 March 1956
CityNew York City, NY
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.
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.
We don't think there are cases where people were evicted out of homes when they shouldn't have been.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
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?