, Columnist
No, It's Not Like 15 Years Ago. What Matters Is 25
Letting the Citi-Travelers merger and its ilk go through in 1998 got us here. Now, the choices are nationalization through universal deposit insurance, or ending the procrastination and breaking up too-big-to-fail.
Weill and Reed later had second thoughts on regulations.
Photographer: Mark Peterson/Corbis/Getty
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As banks fail and regulators strive to arrange rescues, there’s much talk that we’ve turned back the clock 15 years to the Global Financial Crisis. I’d like to suggest that instead we are finally confronting the costs of decisions made almost exactly 25 years ago, in the first two weeks of April 1998.