Jamie Dimon's War With Himself: Collateral Damage

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- JPMorgan Chase(JPM Quote) successfully downplayed its announcement of a successor to CEO Jamie Dimon Tuesday, but a Dimon departure may come far sooner than many realize.

Richard Bove, analyst at Rochdale Securities, believes Dimon will be gone within the next two to three years.

"I honestly believe he's ready to move on. I think he has Henry Paulson-type visions," Bove says, alluding to the former Goldman Sachs (GS Quote) chief who became Treasury Secretary under President George W. Bush.

Adding credibility to Bove's prediction were some rather inscrutable comments by Dimon at the Clinton Global Initiative Conference last week.

"I think it would be a very bad long-term policy error to have banks that are too big to fail. By that I don't mean make the banks smaller. We are large because we have a reason to be large, but you don't mind if a company fails. You mind if a company fails and it destroys your economic life," he said.

So we shouldn't have banks that are too big to fail but we shouldn't make banks smaller? JPMorgan is large because it has a reason to be large?

Perhaps the comment simply was not Dimon's most eloquent moment. But perhaps one can read more between the lines: Maybe Jamie Dimon is at war with himself. As a well-known Democrat, he may believe giant banks are a big problem, which could explain why he uttered the first sentence. But then, remembering he also happens to be the head of a big bank, maybe he backpedaled.