Too Big To Fail: The U.S. Is Still at Risk

On March 20, 2013, more than two years after the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation had become law, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke made it clear that the problem of too-big-to-fail banks had not been solved. “Too Big To Fail is not solved and gone,” he said in a press conference. “It’s still here.”[1] That is, providing an orderly liquidation process for bankrupt banks would be insufficient in keeping the U.S. economy free of vulnerability from even one of the biggest banks taking down the financial sector merely by going bankrupt. Congress should not have missed or minimized this point while working on the Dodd-Frank Act. The self-interested power of Wall Street in Washington and the need of campaign funds in Congress coalesced to dilute the law in spite of the detriment to the public good.

The full essay is at "Too Big to Fail."

1. Mark Gongloff, “Ben Bernanke: ‘I Agree With ElizabethWarren100 Percent’ On Too Big To Fail,” The Huffington Post, March 20, 2013.