Thread: We Can't Break Up the Giant Banks, Can We? Yes We Can!

We Can't Break Up the Giant Banks, Can We? Yes We Can!


Washington's Blog
2009-09-13



Top economists and financial experts believe that the economy cannot recover unless the big, insolvent banks are broken up in an orderly fashion.
In response, defenders of the too-big-to-fails make one or more of the following arguments:
(1) The government does not have the authority to break up the big boys
(2) To break up the banks, the government would have to nationalize them, which would be socialism

(3) The giant banks have now recovered and are no longer insolvent, so it would be counter-productive to break them up

(4) We need the giant banks to restore credit to the economy
None of these arguments are persuasive.

The Government Does Have Authority to Break Up the Big Boys

One of the world's leading economic historians - Niall Ferguson - argues in a current article in Newsweek:
[Geithner is proposing that] there should be a new "resolution authority" for the swift closing down of big banks that fail. But such an authority already exists and was used when Continental Illinois failed in 1984.

Indeed, even the FDIC mentions Continental Illinois in the same breadth as "too big to fail" banks.


And William K. Black - the senior regulator during the S&L crisis, and an Associate Professor of both Economics and Law at the University of Missouri - says that the Prompt Corrective Action Law (PCA), 12 U.S.C. § 1831o, not only authorizes the government to seize insolvent banks, it mandates it, and that the Bush and Obama administrations broke the law by refusing to close insolvent banks.
Others argue that the PCA does not apply to bank holding companies, and so the government really does not have the power to break up the big boys (see this, for example; but compare this).

Whether or not the financial giants can be broken up using the PCA, no one can doubt that the government could find a way to break them up if it wanted.

FDR seized gold during the Great Depression under the Trading With The Enemies Act.

Geithner and Bernanke have been using one loophole and "creative" legal interpretation after another to rationalize their various multi-trillion dollar programs in the face of opposition from the public and Congress (see this, for example).

So don't give me any of this "our hands are tied" malarkey. The Obama administration could break the "too bigs" up in a heartbeat if it wanted to, and then justify it after the fact using PCA or another legal argument.

Temporarily Nationalizing a Bank is Not Socialism
Many argue that it would be wrong for the government to break up the banks, because we would have to take over the banks in order to break them up.

That may be true. But government regulators in the U.S., Sweden and other countries which have broken up insolvent banks say that the government only has to take over banks for around 6 months before breaking them up.

In contrast, the Bush and Obama administrations' actions mean that the government is becoming the majority shareholder in the financial giants more or less permanently. That is - truly - socialism.

Breaking them up and selling off the parts to the highest bidder efficiently and in an orderly fashion would get us back to a semblance of free market capitalism much quicker.

The Giant Banks Have Not Recovered


The giant banks have still not put the toxic assets hidden in their SIVs back on their books.

The tsunamis of commercial real estate, Alt-A, option arm and other loan defaults have not yet hit.

The overhang of derivatives is still looming out there, and still dwarfs the size of the rest of the global economy. Credit default swaps still have not been tamed (see this).

Indeed, Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said today:

The U.S. has failed to fix the underlying problems of its banking system after the credit crunch and the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

“In the U.S. and many other countries, the too-big-to-fail banks have become even bigger,â€

If we can somehow break the Federal Government, where the true threat lies... the banks will fall thereafter.

I don't even want to use a bank account, but somehow I am forced too. What happened to the good old days when you had your bill money hidden in the cookie jar.

Anyone know how to manage your life without a bank account?