http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112609/conservative-plan-break-banks
Every now and then conservatives play against type. George Will, Peggy Noonan, and Senator David Vitter want to break up the big banks. So does Sandy Weill, the former chairman of Citigroup. In 1999, Congress repealed Glass-Steagall, the 1933 law separating commercial and investment banking, in large part so that Weill wouldn’t be inconvenienced as he merged his company with Travelers Group to create the largest financial institution in our solar system. Then, last year, Weill said it had been a mistake to repeal Glass-Steagall. Now he tells us!
Galbraith (who died in 2006) argued that big U.S. corporations had become immune to competition. Any effort to break them up into smaller companies would neither succeed nor—given the complex challenges of a modern economy—be especially desirable. Better to keep them in harness through a partnership with government. “Planning,” Galbraith wrote (in a sentence you could probably get arrested for writing today), “must replace the market.” When the 2008 financial crisis hit, the feds went into Galbraithian planning mode. They bailed out the banks through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), arranged mergers, and, through the Dodd-Frank bill, required big banks to prepare “living wills” showing how they would dismantle themselves in orderly fashion should the need arise. These actions were loudly protested by many on the right (even though all but Dodd-Frank occurred under a Republican president). The bank bailout, in particular, infuriated Tea Party Republicans through the 2010 elections. Three-term Utah Senator Robert Bennett, a Republican who’d voted for one of two TARP bills, was branded “Bailout Bob” and denied renomination at a state convention where the crowd jeered, “TARP, TARP, TARP”
if we payed attention to what the gov't and those we trust to go to Washington on our behalf because they said so are doing in other then our behalf, we might have been able to create enough noise that maybe these banks would not be the albatross around our necks now. falling victim to indifference now can be a death knell to our future prominence.
The critique has lately been embraced by a bipartisan cohort of working politicians. Vitter and Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown will soon co-sponsor legislation to limit bank size. Elizabeth Warren, a fellow banking committee member, will likely support their effort. A similar measure introduced by Brown in 2010 was opposed by the Obama administration and by all but one banking-committee Democrat. It failed on a Senate floor vote, 61–33. But Brown told me, “We would get a majority of [committee] Democrats today.”
we have to no longer consider big finance as out of our realm of existence and more "that entity that if left to it's own devices will continue to gouge and penalize and convince us they have a bridge ti sell. noise people make it let them know that if you prick us we will no longer bleed we will prick back in numbers, w beat them twice third time can be the charm, don't waste it 2014.
