Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced legislation to break up “too big to fail” financial institutions whose failure could be catastrophic to Americans and the economy.
The Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Act would break up large banks such as Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and others that have a “total exposure of more than 3 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP),” Common Dreams reported.The legislation would break up six of the United States’ largest banks including other large non-bank financial corporations such as Prudential and AIG.
“No financial institution should be so large that its failure would cause catastrophic risk to millions of Americans or to our nation’s economic well being,” Sanders said in a statement. “We must end, once and for all, the scheme that is nothing more than a free insurance policy for Wall Street: the policy of ‘too big to fail.'”
The six large banks Sanders is referring to include JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley. These banks have “over $10 trillion in assets, equivalent to 54 percent of our entire GDP and have a combined total exposure that exceeds 68 percent of our nation’s GDP,” according to research provided by Sanders’ office.
“The 4 largest banks in this country (JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo) are on average 80 percent larger today than they were before we bailed them out,” Sanders said in a tweet. “If these banks were too big to fail 10 years ago, what would happen if any of them were to fail today?”
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