JPMorgan Chief: I Could Repay TARP Tomorrow

JPMorgan Chase can’t wait to pay back the government’s bailout money, CEO Jamie Dimon said today, after the company posted a better-than-expected $2.1 billion in earnings. The CEO called the funds a “scarlet letter,” Bloomberg reports, and said he was just waiting for the Treasury’s OK to dump “the TARP baby.” “We could pay it back tomorrow,” he said.

Dimon also said that JPMorgan won’t be buying or selling toxic assets under the Treasury’s new Public-Private Investment Program. “We learned our lesson” about borrowing from the government, he said. (More Jamie Dimon stories.)