Fed’s Fisher Says Too-Big-to-Fail Banks Should Be Shrunk

Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher said the government should break up the biggest U.S. banks rather than allow them to hold a “too-big-to-fail” advantage over smaller firms.

The 12 largest financial institutions hold almost 70 percent of the assets in the nation’s banking system and profit from an unfair implicit guarantee that the government would bail them out, Fisher said today in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland. The biggest banks enjoy a “significant” subsidy, enabling them “to grow larger and riskier,” he said.