Simon Johnson: Idea Of Big Bank Breakup 'Continues To Gain Traction'

The New York Times:

Almost exactly two years ago, at the height of the Senate debate on financial reform, a serious attempt was made to impose a binding size constraint on our largest banks. That effort — sometimes referred to as the Brown-Kaufman amendment — received the support of 33 senators and failed on the floor of the Senate. (Here is some of my Economix coverage from the time.)

Read the whole story at The New York Times

Comments

[OldTulsan]

09:51 AM on 05/11/2012

http://bradsherman.house.gov/2012/04/sherman-reintroduces-too-big-to-fail-too-big-to-exist-act.shtml
Sherman Reintroduces "Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Act" |
Congressman Brad Sherman, Representing the 27th District of California

"Washington DC – Yesterday, Congressman Brad Sherman (D – CA), reintroduced the “Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Act,” (HR 4963) in the 112th Congress. The legislation was cosigned by Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY). Senator Bernie Sanders (I –VT) introduced similar legislation in the Senate during the last Congress. Under this legislation, any institution that is too big to fail will be broken up and reorganized to avoid more Government bailouts and future risk to our economy..."

[Reiner-von-Sinn]

12:57 PM on 05/10/2012

Bust 'em up!

Too-Big-To-Fail got even bigger following the corporatist/Wall Street welfare bail-out.

Bust 'em up.

Competition is good for the economy, right?

[bdzdean]

11:14 AM on 05/10/2012

The other reason potential home buyers are having a difficult time being approved for a mortgage is, its not so much one not so perfect credit score. Its due to the fact the banks don't want to write a mortgage that their not going to make a hefty profit on with mortgage loan interest rates being so low.

I don't care whether its a loan for a new car or a mortgage. The higher interest rate your willing to pay on a loan. The easier its going to be to get approved.

[bdzdean]

11:02 AM on 05/10/2012

The only way for any of these banks to truly get the message that people/consumers are totally fed up with their actions and business practices. Is for people to stop doing business with them.

Move your mortgage's, bank accounts,savings accounts and credit card accounts elsewhere.

[nypapajoe]

10:32 AM on 05/10/2012

For our world to survive as a democratic society we must vote out the republican lobbyist in office and create legislation to curtail the grand theft of our nation by Wall St and the bankers!

[Godbob]

10:12 AM on 05/10/2012

It is an issue of national security. If a bank failure can cause the collapse of the us economy then it s a major risk to the nation and should be addressed. We pour extreme resources into smaller risks like underwear bombs, this is a huge risk to the country, where is the concern?

[builderman55]

10:00 AM on 05/10/2012

I recently watched the 4 hour PBS special on Money, Power and Wall Street, which ended with the depressing fact that the big banks we have today are bigger than they were post crash. Wall Street and Big Banks stocked with billions in taxpayer dollars have spent prodigiously to weaken the reforms designed to prevent another crash. People would do well to remember that the Founders of our country were wary of ANY large concentrations of power, including the incredibly dangerous power of concentrated wealth. And it is far MORE difficult to break it up than it is to keep it from accumulating in the first place. Anyone even remotely cosidering voting for Romney or the current GOP would do well to take a very close look--Romney is the carefully crafted, absolutely committed face of Plutocracy, and we are perilously close to being there already...

[tacevad]

09:09 AM on 05/10/2012

We did it (breaking up) to Ma Bell, We must now follow through with the Big Banks. We should also break up Big Oil and all other " too big to fail" entities except the only one that really Should be too big, that would be America itself