JPMorgan Could Use Fed's Cash to Grow

JPMorgan Chase (JPM Quote) Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon hasn't ruled out using the U.S. Treasury Department's $25 billion capital injection in the banking titan on further acquisitions.

The federal government on Tuesday said it would pump $250 billion of badly needed equity into the troubled banking sector through the purchase of preferred equity stakes. The funds would be allocated as part of the $700 billion troubled asset relief program, or TARP, in a bid to improve investor confidence in the banking system by jump-starting the credit markets.

Already the nation's largest financial institutions including Bank of America (BAC Quote), Goldman Sachs (GS Quote), Morgan Stanley (MS Quote), Citigroup (C Quote) and Wells Fargo (WFC Quote), among others -- regardless of whether they need the capital -- have already agreed to participate in the voluntary program.

"The U.S. government is trying to do some very powerful things to fix the situation," Dimon said. "We really saw this as doing something which is good for the system. ... We did not think that JPMorgan should be selfish or parochial and try to stop what's good for the system because it might be mildly bad for us relative to some of our competitors."

Dimon's comments were made on a conference call to discuss JPMorgan Chase's third-quarter earnings, which came in better than expected, but still fell 84% from the year-ago quarter, as the economic environment deteriorated.

"We necessarily need to be prepared for a bad environment. We don't know what the environment is going to be," Dimon said. "[O]ther than home lending, which we think is far worse than we would have expected, we're actually not that bad. ... but when you see this kind of unemployment, this kind of uncertainty, the reduced consumer spend, we are getting braced for increased loan loss reserves going forward."