Washington, May 6 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) (click here) today introduced legislation to break up the nation’s biggest banks in order to safeguard the economy and prevent another costly taxpayer bailout. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) proposed a companion bill in the House.
“No single financial institution should have holdings so extensive that its failure could send the world economy into crisis,” Sanders said. “If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.”
The biggest banks in the United States are now 80 percent bigger than they were one year before the financial crisis in 2008 when the Federal Reserve provided $16 trillion in near zero-interest loans and Congress approved a $700 billion taxpayer bailout.
“Never again should a financial institution be able to demand a federal bailout,” Sherman said. “They claim; ‘If we go down, the economy is going down with us,’ but by breaking up these institutions long before they face a crisis, we ensure a healthy financial system where medium-sized institutions can compete in the free market.”
The 2008 financial crisis had a devastating impact on the U.S. economy. It cost as much as $14 trillion, the Dallas Federal Reserve calculated. The Government Accountability Office pegged the cost at $13 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the crisis nearly doubled the national debt and cost more than the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.
The six largest U.S. financial institutions today have assets of some $10 trillion, an amount equal to almost 60 percent of gross domestic product. They handle more than two-thirds of all credit card purchases, control nearly 50 percent of all bank deposits, and control over 95 percent of the $240 trillion in derivatives held by commercial banks.
The Sanders and Sherman legislation would give banking regulators 90 days to identify commercial banks, investment banks, hedge funds, insurance companies and other entities whose “failure would have a catastrophic effect on the stability of either the financial system or the United States economy without substantial government assistance.”...
$249 trillion in derivatives? How did that happen? There are no assets to cover $249 trillion. This is nuts. I think they have entered into such hideous amounts of gambling in order to make it impossible to break them up. Something needs to be done. This is unconscionable.
LOCAL ECONOMIES EVERYONE. It is the only economy that will continue to exist after this mess hits the global economy.
There is no way to provide a bailout this size of indebtedness. This is all air. There is nothing to mitigate. The banking industry has crossed into the area of "no return." There is no way a bailout can be created to cover this level of gambling.
The international community has to be feeling some of this by now. I am so grateful to the American people when they decided to take back their cities and towns. It is the only thing that can be done. When there is another financial collapse the USA will feel it, but, not nearly to the extent the rest of the world community will. STOP TPP. It won't solve anything and will make any collapse worse.
This is unbelievable. There is no bank that has the vault size to hold $240 trillion. It is all paper and air and nothing else.
Back to the basics everyone. Love your family and enjoy life. Keep it local. Foster new venues of economy such as art. Return to the classics for entertainment including orchestra's and theater.
$249 trillion in derivatives? How did that happen? There are no assets to cover $249 trillion. This is nuts. I think they have entered into such hideous amounts of gambling in order to make it impossible to break them up. Something needs to be done. This is unconscionable.
LOCAL ECONOMIES EVERYONE. It is the only economy that will continue to exist after this mess hits the global economy.
There is no way to provide a bailout this size of indebtedness. This is all air. There is nothing to mitigate. The banking industry has crossed into the area of "no return." There is no way a bailout can be created to cover this level of gambling.
The international community has to be feeling some of this by now. I am so grateful to the American people when they decided to take back their cities and towns. It is the only thing that can be done. When there is another financial collapse the USA will feel it, but, not nearly to the extent the rest of the world community will. STOP TPP. It won't solve anything and will make any collapse worse.
This is unbelievable. There is no bank that has the vault size to hold $240 trillion. It is all paper and air and nothing else.
Back to the basics everyone. Love your family and enjoy life. Keep it local. Foster new venues of economy such as art. Return to the classics for entertainment including orchestra's and theater.
