Breaking up four big banks
The New York Times – Almost exactly two years ago, at the height of the Senate debate on financial reform, a serious attempt was made to impose a binding size constraint on our largest banks. That effort — sometimes referred to as the Brown-Kaufman amendment — received the support of 33 senators and failed on the floor of the Senate.
On Wednesday, Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, introduced the Safe, Accountable, Fair and Efficient Banking Act, or SAFE Banking Act, which would force the largest four banks in the country to shrink. (Details of this proposal, similar in name to the original Brown-Kaufman plan, are in this briefing memo for a Senate banking subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, available through Politico, and in this news release).
His proposal, while not likely to become law immediately, is garnering support from across the political spectrum — and more support than essentially the same ideas received two years ago.
The proposition is simple: Too-big-to-fail banks should be made smaller, and preferably small enough to fail without causing global panic. This idea had been gathering momentum since the fall of 2008 and, while the Brown-Kaufman amendment originated on the Democratic side, support was beginning to appear across the aisle. But big banks and the Treasury Department both opposed it, and parliamentary maneuvers ensured there was little real debate. (For a compelling account of how the financial lobby works, both in general and in this instance, look for a forthcoming book by Jeff Connaughton, former chief of staff to former Senator Ted Kaufman of Delaware.)
The issue has not gone away. And while the financial sector has pushed back with some success against various components of the Dodd-Frank reform legislation, the idea of breaking up very large banks has gained momentum.
In particular, informed sentiment has shifted against continuing to allow very large banks to operate in their current highly leveraged form, with a great deal of debt and very little equity. There is increasing recognition of the huge and unfair costs that these structures impose on the rest of the economy.
