Big Banks’ Success Could Spell Their Doom
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April 4 (Bloomberg) -- Is Washington likely to break up thecountry’s biggest banks? No, not right now. But perhaps soon.
Political momentum for dismantling them has been, in recentweeks, overstated. That unanimous vote in the Senate for abudget amendment critical of big banks? It was a nonbindingamendment to end “too-big-to-fail subsidies.” As it happens,there isn’t a line item in the federal budget titled “too-big-to-fail subsidies.” The vote was a freebie against the abstractconcept of taxpayers subsidizing Wall Street -- that’s why theoutcome was unanimous. It was like a vote against halitosis.