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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGeorge Will: Time to Break Up the Big Banks
Can't disagree with the sentiment, except that the jackass seems to think that government bought banksters instead of the other way around. Stopped clocks and all.
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/279-82/15945-focus-time-to-break-up-the-big-banks
ith his chronically gravelly voice and relentlessly liberal agenda, Sherrod Brown seems to have stepped out of "Les Miserables," hoarse from singing revolutionary anthems at the barricades. Today, Ohio's senior senator has a project worthy of Victor Hugo - and of conservatives' support. He wants to break up the biggest banks.
He would advocate this even if he thought such banks would never have a crisis sufficient to threaten the financial system. He believes they are unhealthy for the financial system even when they are healthy. This is because there is a silent subsidy - an unfair competitive advantage relative to community banks - inherent in being deemed by the government, implicitly but clearly, too big to fail.
The Senate has unanimously passed a bill offered by Brown and Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, directing the Government Accountability Office to study whether banks with more than $500?billion in assets acquire an "economic benefit" because of their dangerous scale. Is their debt priced favorably because, being TBTF, they are considered especially creditworthy? Brown believes the 20 largest banks pay less when borrowing - 50 to 80 basis points less - than community banks must pay.
SharonAnn
(13,776 posts)elleng
(130,972 posts)exotic financial instruments and transactions unknown even in other parts of the sprawl. . . (Quite right)
By breaking up the biggest banks, conservatives will not be putting asunder what the free market has joined together. Government nurtured these behemoths by weaving an improvident safety net and by practicing crony capitalism. Dismantling them would be a blow against government that has become too big not to fail. Aux barricades!'
Right about 'stopped clocks,' but only partially right twice a day.
Think this is a beginning of something useful???
eridani
(51,907 posts)--I can put up with ignoring the fact that the behemoths bought and paid for government to protect them at the expense of the rest of society.
Berlum
(7,044 posts)Enrique
(27,461 posts)we'll know why: he's packed a bag and joined Occupy Wall Street.