Banks Rush to Repay U.S. Funds, but Cling To Other Lifelines; J.P. Morgan Says Aid Is a 'Scarlet Letter'
Six months after Washington rescued Wall Street, exasperated banks insist they want to leave the lifeboat.</br></br>Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of J.P. Morgan Chase, said yesterday that he regrets accepting $25 billion in federal aid. He called the money "a scarlet letter," pledged quick repayment and renounced further borrowing from the government, saying, "We've learned our lesson about that."</br></br>But the company, which announced a $2.1 billion first-quarter profit yesterday, has not entirely had it with Washington. J.P. Morgan said it plans to continue using a separate federal aid program through which it has borrowed more than $40 billion.</br></br>Other large banks are attempting the same combination of breakup and embrace. Even as they clamor to exit the most prominent part of the bailout program by repaying government investments, firms continue to rely on other federal programs to raise even larger amounts of money.</br></br>The Treasury Department so far has invested slightly less than $200 billion in banks. Meanwhile, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has helped companies, including J.P. Morgan, borrow more than $336 billion through the end of March, by guaranteeing to repay investors if the firms defaulted. And financial firms hold more than $1 trillion in emergency loans from the Federal Reserve.