Friday, July 27, 2012

Too Big To Fail Fail

The failure of "Too Big to Fail" was highlighted recently by Sandy Weill, former CEO of Citigroup.  On CNBC's "Squawk Box" he called for the breakup of the big banks.  Hindsight is 20-20, but its shocking that these intelligent captains of business can't take the time to study history and understand the rationale for why regulations like Glass-Steagall were put in place in the first place. I suppose at the end of the day, the 1% are starting to realize that, after they've squeezed all the money out of the 99%, no matter what the effective tax rate is, they will be the only ones with the money to pay in, so they will be stuck with the bill.
On Wednesday, Mr. Weill called for a wall between a bank’s deposit-taking operations and its risky trading businesses. In other words, he would like to resurrect the regulation that he once fought.
“What we should probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking,” Mr. Weill, the former chief executive of Citigroup, told CNBC. “Have banks do something that’s not going to risk the taxpayer dollars, that’s not going to be too big to fail.”1
References: 1) 25-Jul-2012. De La Merced, Michael J. Weill Calls for Splitting Up Big Banks. New York Times.