Red Jahncke , Columnist

Breaking Up Banks Is Easy When They Aren’t Failing

January 6, 2013 at 11:30 PM UTC

Red Jahncke is president of Townsend Group International, a business consultancy in Connecticut, and a freelance columnist who writes on a wide range of public policy issues.

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If we decide to break up the big banks, can we actually do it?

The first and most obvious proof that we can lies in the 2010 bank-regulation law, the Dodd-Frank Act, which requires America’s too-big-to-fail banks to submit plans -- so-called living wills -- outlining how they can be dismantled if they get into trouble. So these banks have already provided breakup blueprints.