Tennessee Senator Bob Corker was among those questioning the CEO of JPMorgan Chase Wednesday. While some senators grilled Jamie Dimon over the two billion dollars his company lost earlier this year on a bad hedge, Corker chose a different tack.
Some in Washington saw Dimon’s appearance before the Senate banking committee as a step toward new financial regulation. It’s something Corker has qualms about – he didn’t like how the Dodd-Frank law turned out two years ago, in particular the consumer protection agency it created.
Corker asked Dimon whether such regulation makes high finance safer – Dimon said he wasn’t sure. Corker then gave Dimon a chance to defend his line of work, asking what the world would be like without such complex institutions.
“There’s a place for large companies, and for small companies. For people like us, we bank some of the largest global multinationals in America and around the world. We can bank companies in 40 different countries. We do trade finance. We give inter-day lines of billions of dollars to some of the biggest companies.”
Dimon did also list a few downsides that come with immense size: greed, arrogance, hubris, lack of attention to detail. But, Dimon added, if big American banks weren’t doing it, somebody else would.
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