JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon spoke at a Council on Foreign Relations event on Wednesday on Wall Street regulation, The Washington Post reported yesterday. Dimon, who has crusaded against increased regulation on Wall Street, said that the current regulatory environment has created a lot of confusion with “overlapping jurisdictions, no way to adjudicate disputes.” Dimon anticipates that overhead costs from new domestic and international regulations will hit more than $1 billion a year. A bank of JPMorgan’s size can easily absorb such costs, but Dimon said that smaller institutions will struggle to contend with compliance expenses. Corporations, small businesses, consumers and the housing market are all in better shape, Dimon said. The problem, he said, is the uncertainty around taxes, policy and the fiscal cliff, which is “a huge wet blanket” on an otherwise improving economy. Asked whether he believes the bond markets will move against the U.S., Dimon said it is simply a matter of when, as the country “can’t borrow indefinitely.”
