JPMorgan agrees $13 billion settlement

(Reuters) - In late September, JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon walked into the office of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

"We're willing to take our lumps," he said, according to a person briefed on the matter.

"We don't think there were serious mistakes made," he added, in a meeting he had requested with Holder.

JPMorgan finally took its punishment on Tuesday, agreeing to a $13 billion settlement with the U.S. government to settle charges that the bank overstated the quality of mortgages it was selling to investors in the run-up to the financial crisis.

The Department of Justice trumpeted its settlement as a big step toward holding banks accountable for their behavior before the financial crisis.

The behavior that the largest U.S. bank admitted to, authorities said, is at the heart of what inflated the housing bubble: lenders making bad mortgages and selling them to investors who thought they were relatively safe. When the loans started turning bad, investors lost faith in the banking system, and a housing crisis turned into a financial crisis.