Dimon: $5B Mortgage Penalties Led Him to Never Trust the Government Again
Jamie Dimon · The Jamie Dimon Interview: How JP Morgan Became an $800 Billion Bank · Acquired · Jul 16, 2025 · at 40:48
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon explains his frustration over post-crisis federal enforcement actions related to mortgages from acquired institutions Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual.
0:00 / 0:11exact quote · 11.8s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“They made us pay five billion dollars on the more, the bad mortgages that Bear Stearns had done, and that's what made me make the statement I wouldn't do it again. I wouldn't, put it this way, I don't know how to say this, I wouldn't really trust the government again.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Jamie Dimon
Dimon: Bank One held more credit risk than Citibank under aggressive accounting
“I quickly realized that BankOne had more U.S. Corporate credit risk
Than Citibank did.
And they, the way they accounted for it was unbelievably aggressive.
And, you know, so they had less capital, less reserves, less this.
They were calling these things profit…”
Dimon: Banks earning 30% ROE pre-2007 mostly went bankrupt in 2008
“If you look at the history of banks from up until 2007, a lot of banks were earning 30% equity.
Most of them went bankrupt.
We never did that much.
Okay.
But in oh eight and oh nine, we were fine and they weren't.”
Dimon: An Unrescued Bear Stearns Would Have Triggered Immediate Financial Collapse
“It would have been gone, and the crisis would have just unfolded”
Dimon: 80% of Federal Mortgage Settlement Targeted Bear and WaMu Conduct
“80% of what they're asking for related to Bear Stearns and Wamuu, not JPMorgan Chase.”
Dimon: The $2T private credit market is not a systemic risk
“So there, it may, there may be something in there that would become a problem one day. I don't think it's systemic. So that two trillion, the mortgage market when the time it blew up was, I'm going to say, nine trillion, and a trillion dollars was lost.”
Dimon: US critical infrastructure protections are inadequate for cyber war
“But it is, you're talking about grids and communications companies and water and even part of the military establishment. The protections are not what you need. If we ever get any kind of war where cyber is involved, and China is very good at it, and so is Rus…”