Moody's Thinks We've Solved Too-Big-To-Fail

Are big, ugly, taxpayer-funded bank bailouts a thing of the past in the U.S.? Moody's Investors Service seems to think so. The Government Accountability Office isn't so sure.

Yesterday evening, Moody's announcedthat the credit ratings of the eight largest U.S. bank holding companies -- JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Company Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, State Street Corp. and Bank of New York Mellon Corp. -- will no longer receive any "uplift" thanks to the expectation of government support in times of trouble. The move comes at an opportune moment for the banks, which, as Bloomberg View wrotein a recent editorial, have been seeking to avoid tougher capital rules by arguing that the government can safely let them fail.