Commercial Banks Quotes

• In the simplest sense, the key to the performance of any traditional commercial bank ... is the profitability of the loans it makes.

  Robert G. Wilmers

  Keys, Banking, Loan

  7 Copy quote

• Commercial banks are very good for certain businesses, like loans and guarding other people's money. They're not great investors or entrepreneurs.

  John Gutfreund

  People, Entrepreneur, Guarding

  6 Copy quote

• If all the bank loans were paid, no one could have a bank deposit, and there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in circulation. This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the commercial banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash, or credit. If the banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless situation is almost incredible - but there it is.

  Robert W. Hemphill

  Bankers, Dollars, Credit

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• Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit.

  Robert W. Hemphill

  Money, Bankers, Dollars

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• Investment banks manage to go bankrupt through their investment-banking activities, commercial banks manage to go bankrupt through their commercial-banking activities.

  Ben Bernanke

  Banking, Investment, Activity

  4 Copy quote

• Our commercial bank [JPMorgan] is only in the U.S. We are serving what you call SMEs - small businesses, private companies.

  Jamie Dimon

  Small Business, Company, Serving

  Source: asia.nikkei.com

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• The mantra of the National Commercial Bank is 'building a better Jamaica.' If this bank is going to be everlastingly successful, it has to take on the ailments of this society.

  Michael Lee-Chin

  Successful, Jamaica, Building

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• I rang my friend Jim Wolfensohn, who was then running a private commercial bank in New York. I said, "Come up to Vancouver", and he did. I put my proposition to him. He said, "I think it could work." I said, "Will you help us?" He said, "Yes." So, I set aside senior people in our treasury and they worked with Wolfensohn and the investment sanctions were applied. And that's what brought the regime down. The last South African Finance Minister, Barend du Plessis, went on record as saying that it was the investment sanctions that put the final nail in the coffin of apartheid.

  Bob Hawke

  Senior, Running, New York

  Source: www.commonwealthoralhistories.org

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• If two parties, instead of being a bank and an individual, were an individual and an individual, they could not inflate the circulating medium by a loan transaction, for the simple reason that the lender could not lend what he didn't have, as banks can do. Only commercial banks and trust companies can lend money that they manufacture by lending it.

  Irving Fisher

  Party, Simple, Two

  28 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jamie Dimon

  Numbers, One Day, Bigger

  "Jamie Dimon on Finance: 'Who Owns the Future?'". Interview with John Micklethwait, www.bloomberg.com. March 1, 2016.

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• 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."

  Jamie Dimon

  Japan, Needs, Banking

  Source: asia.nikkei.com

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• 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.

  Jamie Dimon

  Moving, Retail, Use

  "Jamie Dimon on Finance: 'Who Owns the Future?'". Interview with John Micklethwait, www.bloomberg.com. March 1, 2016.

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• Value investors will not invest in businesses that they cannot readily understand or ones they find excessively risky. Hence few value investors will own the shares of technology companies. Many also shun commercial banks, which they consider to have unanalyzable assets, as well as property and casualty insurance companies, which have both unanalyzable assets and liabilities.

  Seth Klarman

  Technology, Share, Casualties

  15 Copy quote

• This is the joint responsibility of everyone who was involved in the introduction of the euro without understanding the consequences. When the euro was introduced, the regulators allowed banks to buy unlimited amounts of government bonds without setting aside any equity capital. And the European Central Bank discounted all government bonds on equal terms. So commercial banks found it advantageous to accumulate the bonds of the weaker countries to earn a few extra basis points.

  George Soros

  Country, Responsibility, Government

  "George Soros on the Euro Crisis". Interview with Der Spiegel, www.georgesoros.com. June 26, 2012.

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• The goal of the FED, as with all central banks, is three-fold: (1) to protect the largest commercial banks from their depositors, who occasionally exercise their contractual right to withdraw currency (the ungrateful cads); (2) to control entry of newcomers into the bankers' cartel (interlopers); (3) to keep the stock market from collapsing in a panic, thereby persuading depositors to withdraw currency

  Gary North

  Exercise, Goal, Ungrateful

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• At the base of the Fed pyramid, and therefore of the bank system's creation of "money" in the sense of deposits, is the Fed's power to print legal tender money. But the Fed tries its best not to print cash but rather to "print" or create demand deposits, checking deposits, out of thin air, since its demand deposits constitute the reserves on top of which the commercial banks can pyramid a multiple creation of bank deposits, or "checkbook money."

  Murray Rothbard

  Money, Air, Pyramids

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