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Megabanks may be able to fight off regulatory forces demanding their corporate downsizing, but a voluntary breakup may be the only way to sway public opinion their way.
March 14 -
Safety and soundness in banking will be found more in changes in oversight than regulation.
February 1 -
While I'm sure some community bankers applauded Sandy Weill's recent call to break up our nation's largest banks, I, for one, did not.
August 1 -
Too-big-to-fail stifles economic growth. Oligopolies and asset concentration strangle competition and suppress innovation, job creation and free markets in financial services, as they once did in oil, steel and telecommunications.
April 17
Economist Simon Johnson is out with new
"There has been an outbreak of clear thinking among officials and politicians who increasingly agree that too-big-to-fail is not a good arrangement for the financial sector,” Johnson writes. He goes on to cite the recent opposition voiced by Sens. Sherrod Brown, David Vitter and Elizabeth Warren as well as U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s surprising admission regarding "too big jail” among the evidence "the executives who live well on subsidies at big banks should be very afraid."
Political and public outcry against "too big fail" has certainly grown in the last few months. As American Banker
"There's momentum, for sure," public relations consultant Harvey Radin notes in a recent
Zions Bank CEO Harris Simmons echoed the concern when he
"Right now it's a parlor game. … Whether this gets enough momentum, who knows, but I think we have about one more major problem in large banks, and it's probably a done deal," Simmons told the audience.
But these stern warnings may premature (or in Johnson's case wishful thinking, given that he's
"If we cannot eliminate Fannie and Freddie, two of the most direct government subsidy vehicles, how can we tackle the big banks?" one commenter wrote on an
And, perhaps as prevailing
"Potential influence on economy and borrowing costs needs [to be] part of #TBTF breakup talk," Mayra Rodríguez Valladares, managing principal at
Has the political tide turned against the big banks enough for Congress to impose limits on their size? Do large financial institutions need to fear a break up? Why or Why not? Let us know in the comments below.
Jeanine Skowronski is the deputy editor of BankThink. You can contact her at