In February
2012, Tyler Cowen claimed in the New York Times that people across the
political spectrum were “talking about splitting up America’s large banks.” At
the time, I could discern no such talk, although this does not mean that it was
not going on. As the Dodd-Frank financial reform law was being written in 2010,
the option of splitting up banks like Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and JP
Morgan Chase was quietly but assiduously kept off the front burners. It is
difficult to believe that the big banks would have relaxed in their efforts to
relegate such threats in early 2012 as if the passage of the legislation in
2010 meant that more astringent options were no longer possible. In his
article, Cowen includes some other questionable claims. Reading between the
lines, he seems to have been “playing by the rules” in support of the big guys.
The full essay is at "Limiting the Size of the Big Banks."
