Matt Taibbi ~ Too-Big-To-Fail Takes Another Body Blow

Rolling Stone May 1 2013

Sen. Sherrod Brown and Sen. David Vitter hold a news conference to announce the details of ‘Too Big to Fail’ legislation.

Minds are changing on Too Big to Fail. A month ago, it was just something in the air. Now, it looks like we’re headed for a real legislative confrontation. And man, is the finance sector freaking.

Last week, on April 24th, Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Louisiana Republican David Vitter introduced legislation called the “Terminating Bailouts for Taxpayer Fairness Act of 2013 Act,” or the “Brown-Vitter TBTF Act” for short. The bill is a gun aimed directly at the head of the Too-Big-To-Fail beast.

During the Dodd-Frank negotiations a few years ago, Brown teamed up with Delaware Democrat Ted Kaufman to introduce an amendment that would have physically capped the size of the biggest banks. The amendment was bold and righteous but was slaughtered on the floor by a 61-33 margin, undermined by leaders of both parties – 27 Democrats voted against it.

Brown-Vitter offers a different and, in a way, more elegant solution to the problem than Brown-Kaufman. Rather than impose size limits, it simply insists that banks with over $500 billion in assets maintain higher capital reserves than are currently required. Companies like J.P. Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Bank of America maintain $15 real dollars for every $100 lent out.

The bill only has such tough requirements for just those few megabanks, which sounds unfair, except that the aim of the bill, precisely, is to level the playing field. Right now, the biggest U.S. banks enjoy a massive inherent market advantage in that they’re able to borrow money far more cheaply than other banks, because everybody on earth knows the government will never let them fail and will always bail them out in a pinch, making their debt essentially U.S.-government guaranteed. Studies have shown that these banks borrow money at about 0.8 percent more cheaply than other banks, and that this implicit government subsidy is worth about $83 billion a year just to the top 10 banks in America. This bill would essentially wipe out that hidden subsidy and make the banks bailout-proof.

As soon as Brown-Vitter was introduced, a very interesting thing happened. The Independent Community Bankers of America, or ICBA, issued a press release boosting the bill. “ICBA strongly supports this legislation,” the release read, “and urges all community banks to join the association in advocating passage of legislation to end too-big-to-fail.”

This was a big thing. It was the first time since the crisis that a prominent financial industry group opposed the will of the TBTF banks. I remember covering Dodd-Frank and being told by a number of members in the House and the Senate that the sentiment of many community bankers was for breaking up or at least curtailing the power of companies like Chase and Bank of America, but that the community banking lobby was not yet prepared to take that step.

Continue reading

GE Christenson ~ Non-Predictions For 2013 & 2014

 Deviant Investor | January 14 2013

More of the Same

  • More money printing by central banks. A trillion here and a trillion there, printed money everywhere.
  • More deficit spending. $3 Billion per day, but who cares?
  • More useless commentary about controlling spending, but the result will be increased spending and more useless commentary.
  • More and higher taxes. More consumer price inflation.
  • More QE. Printing money props up the stock market, but for how long?
  • More debt. More student loans, more credit card debt, more mortgages, more sovereign debt, and eventually some nasty defaults.

Less of the Same

  • Less Congressional credibility – low and going lower.
  • Less belief in a better future. It is difficult to believe in a brighter future when the food stamps and welfare payments just don’t buy what they used to.
  • Less employment. People continue to drop out of the employment statistics because they have given up hope of finding work. This is called “structural unemployment.”
  • Less purchasing power for the dollar. The more the central banks print, the higher the cost of food, fuel, beer, and wine.
  • Lower standard of living. With much higher costs, the standard of living for most Americans will continue to decline.

Continue reading

GE Christenson ~ The Power And Greed Pyramid

Deviant Investor | December 31 2012

pyramid

Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves the Drug War is a Joke” says Matt Taibbi of the Rolling Stone. He leads with “If you’ve ever been arrested on a drug charge, if you’ve ever spent even a day in jail for having a stem of marijuana in your pocket or “drug paraphernalia” in your gym bag, Assistant Attorney General and longtime Bill Clinton pal Lanny Breuer has a message for you: Bite me.” Taibbi is refreshingly direct. Please read his article.

The settlement shows, in my opinion:

  • The excuse was “Criminal prosecution might topple the bank and endanger the financial system.” If that is true (doubtful) in what condition is our financial system, even after $Trillions of bailouts? If it is not true, what does that say about the “rule of law” and corruption at the top?
  • Laundering $Billions in drug money is a criminal offense, but not prosecutable, if done by politically connected bankers.
  • If bankers are not prosecuted for “vast and prolonged” money laundering and aiding “terrorism” then we have a clear confirmation that “too big to fail” (TBTF) banks are higher up the power pyramid than government officials.
  • Supposedly the war on drugs is important. We have spent $Billions and put millions in jail to discourage drug use (How is that working for us?) so it must be important. But apparently it is actually not important if a TBTF bank is laundering $Billions in drug money each year (month?).
  • Supposedly the war on terrorism is important. We have spent $Trillions and killed many people to fight “terrorism” (How is that working for us?) so it must be important. But apparently it is not important if a TBTF bank is assisting the illegal transfer of $Billions to terrorist organizations.

Continue reading

Keiser Report ~ Too Big To Jail [Video]

RussiaToday | December 13 2012

In this episode, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert look at HSBC being fined rather than criminally charged in order to avoid destabilizing the system, while JP Morgan and others are being sued for about a trillion in bad mortgages investors were duped into buying. They also look at “1001″ under which bankers who lied to the federal housing authorities could be criminally tried for lying to a federal official.

In the second half, Max Keiser talks to Kyra Maya Phillips of MisfitEconomy.com about democracy aboard pirate ships of the 18th century on which No Plunder, No Pay was the name of the game and innovation happened on the fringe. Max proposes banksters walk the plank in a specially built platform in Trafalgar Square.

Enhanced by Zemanta

The Coming Derivatives Panic That Will Destroy Global Financial Markets

The Economic Collapse Blog | November 5 2012

When financial markets in the United States crash, so does the U.S. economy.  Just remember what happened back in 2008.  The financial markets crashed, the credit markets froze up, and suddenly the economy went into cardiac arrest.  Well, there are very few things that could cause the financial markets to crash harder or farther than a derivatives panic.  Sadly, most Americans don’t even understand what derivatives are.  Unlike stocks and bonds, a derivative is not an investment in anything real.  Rather, a derivative is a legal bet on the future value or performance of something else.  Just like you can go to Las Vegas and bet on who will win the football games this weekend, bankers on Wall Street make trillions of dollars of bets about how interest rates will perform in the future and about what credit instruments are likely to default.  Wall Street has been transformed into a gigantic casino where people are betting on just about anything that you can imagine.  This works fine as long as there are not any wild swings in the economy and risk is managed with strict discipline, but as we have seen, there have been times when derivatives have caused massive problems in recent years.  For example, do you know why the largest insurance company in the world, AIG, crashed back in 2008 and required a government bailout?  It was because of derivatives.  Bad derivatives trades also caused the failure of MF Global, and the 6 billion dollar loss that JPMorgan Chase recently suffered because of derivatives made headlines all over the globe.  But all of those incidents were just warm up acts for the coming derivatives panic that will destroy global financial markets.  The largest casino in the history of the world is going to go “bust” and the economic fallout from the financial crash that will happen as a result will be absolutely horrific.

There is a reason why Warren Buffett once referred to derivatives as “financial weapons of mass destruction”.  Nobody really knows the total value of all the derivatives that are floating around out there, but estimates place the notional value of the global derivatives market anywhere from 600 trillion dollars all the way up to 1.5 quadrillion dollars.

Keep in mind that global GDP is somewhere around 70 trillion dollars for an entire year.  So we are talking about an amount of money that is absolutely mind blowing.

So who is buying and selling all of these derivatives?

Continue reading

Jim Willie ~ Outline On Collapse End Game

Golden Jackass | June 27 2012 | Thanks, Ann

Many are the events, signals, and telltale clues of a real live actual systemic failure in progress. Until the last several months, such banter was dismissed by the soldiers in the financial arena. But lately, they cannot dismiss the onslaught of evidence, a veritable plethora of ugly symptoms of conditions gone terribly wrong and solutions at best gone awry and at worst never intended in the first place. My theory has been steady from the TARP Fund scandal and the Too Big To Fail mantra of deceit. The plan all along since the breakdown began in September 2008 has been to preserve power, to maintain intact the insolvent banks an operational crew of zombies, to aid the financial sector bound in Wall Street, to pay benign neglect to Main Street and businesses (expect for symbols like General Motors), to expand the propaganda of a fictional recovery, and to maintain the endless wars. The wars serve two purposes, to enable significant fraud from overcharged services, and to hold open the gateways for sizeable money laundering flows into the Wall Street banks, those hollow structures that closely resemble a coke addict with dark teeth, wretched bones, wasted organs, lost attention, and a listless gait. The Greek showcase is coming to a neighborhood near you in Western Europe and Great Britain, soon to feature debuts across North America. No, the United States is not immune from the horrors of ruin since its marquee billboards read Zero Percent. It only means the wrecking ball works from the inside out, serving as the central needle in the Black Hole. An outline of the End Game can be written. This article is not comprehensive by any means. But it serves as a decent posting on an outhouse wall. Consider the following as musings in observation of Uncle Sam on death row. They bear no logical flow, just random concepts.

Operation Twist Is Q.E.

Operation Twist cements ZIRP and closes the door on any Exit Strategy. Nothing exists in the twist of substance, a mere shift of the shell game movement. The most powerful effect of a maintained Zero Percent Interest Policy is that it ensures a systemic failure with capital destruction, rising costs, falling profit margins, and deterioration in the US Economy. It guarantees growing federal deficits without any potential of resolution, and finally a USGovt debt default. Just one year ago, the travesty of political failure was in full view with the Super Committee charged with spending reduction. It folded like a cheap tent. Deficits have been written in stone. The nation has moved from a permanent housing decline and lost legitimate income (factory exodus to China) as principal cause for systemic failure, to a failure based upon capital decay and absent profitability. Absent legitimate income fostered rot from within. The US Fed in its growing desperation (hardly infinite wisdom) has been attempting to control the rising cost structure by means of a steady concerted effort to render deep harm to final demand through economic damage. They will succeed, but cause a downward spiral that cannot escape the powerful clutches of capitalism gone into reverse. The central bank clowns will win a USTreasury Bond rally to bring about the final collapse all in a Black Hole. As the 10-year TNX yield zips below 1.5% and heads toward 1.0% in the future months, as the recession gallops along and enjoys recognition, the systemic failure will be more evident.

Trillion$ As Pocket Change

From December 2011 to April 2012, the Dollar Swap Facility released $3.2 trillion for European bank aid. It accomplished nothing, since their banks are a field of Greek-like ruins still. The money went into the LTRO funds, the ill-planned knucklehead Draghi plan. The banks bought overpriced government bonds, lifted in value by the Euro Central Bank itself. The same banks are worse off than before the application of LTRO funds. What irony! Draghi has no credibility left. Harken back to 2009 when a similar Dollar Swap Facility released over $1 trillion to the same European banks. It solved nothing either. The tragedy is accentuated by the realization that central bank clowns learn nothing, attempt the same vacant solutions, only to repeat their errors at a later date. The public seems incapable to recall the past failures, holding out hope. Now we hear of a possible $2 trillion plan to recapitalize the European banking system. In Weimar terms, this is pocket change.Counting the US fixes, the London fixes, and the previous DSFacility, the total is closer to $6 trillion already wasted in a massive debasement series of whiffs. So another $2 trillion is pissing in the wind of Weimar flatulence, the stench to be noted by next year.

When the paper mache artisans start talking about a total of $10 to $12 trillion for Western Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States combined, then they will be seriously planning a banking system recapitalization. They prefer the futile incremental approach, with the proviso of not liquidating the big banks. The hilarious factor is that even $10 trillion would not work, but it would indeed buy another couple years, maybe three years. So if an alcoholic has the Delirious Tremens, the consensus stupidity calls for feeding him a higher proof Jack Daniels whisky and from a vat for intravenous application, which will revive him, when a mere few liters would not. It is utterly amazing that Bernanke and Draghi are given any respect at all. This is utterly absurd, since the wrong-footed solution is going to be simply higher volume of what does not succeed in reviving the system. WHEN THEY START TALKING ABOUT BIG BANK LIQUIDATION AND A NEW GOLD-BACKED MONETARY SYSTEM, THEN EXPECT SOME TRACTION. But such a plan would involve plowing the system under and removing the bankers from power. Until then, plan for a bigger killing field. The great tragedy is that the killing field is the entire Western monetary system, attached at the hip to the Western Economic system. Witness the gradual collapse.

Basel Rules Looks To Gold

If the Basel castle dwellers decide to make Gold a Tier-1 asset, banking capital adequacy ratios would be adjusted by a dictated order. In response to the global banking crisis, based upon paper foundation turned toxic, the Basel rule changes have aggravated the banking woes. As rules are tightened according to assets held and their type, the move could potentially be favorable toward Gold. New encouraging rules that declare Gold to be a reserve asset could result in between 1700 and 2000 tons in purchase. Think of it as bank ballast in a storm of toxic seas. The issue is the so-called Basel III rules. The ultimate central bank is on the verge of declaring Gold to be a Tier-1 asset for commercial banks with 100% weighting. Curiously, it is currently a Tier-3 category with just a 50% risk weighting. Like gold is only half money, how absurd!! It took a 50% downgrade of sovereign bonds to bring about such progress. They are set to increase the amount of capital banks also must set aside, a double win potentially. The incentive away from Gold toward risky assets such as stock, currency, and debt-related assets resulted in disasters. A category upgrade in Gold would effectively drive up its value relative to other competitive qualifying assets. By elevating Gold to a bank reserve asset, stability would enter the equation, since the yellow stable metal moves inversely to the risky paper assets that have crumbled. Gold is ideal as it bears no credit risk, and has no counter-party risk, only theft risk (due to desirability) and shell game risk (from certificate games).

Continue reading

Matt Taibbi ~ Why Did Inventor Of ‘Too Big To Fail’ Change His Mind?

RS_News | August 4 2012

There were a great many fascinating moments in the now-legendary Squawk Box interview of former Citigroup chairman Sandy Weill, in which the creator of the Too-Big-To-Fail model told an astonished Andrew Ross Sorkin that it was time to break up the Too-Big-To-Fail banks. But one moment in particular flew under the radar:

SORKIN: But did this come to you in 2008, 2009, was there a conversation you had with someone, because this is a true revolution.

WEILL: Change. You know I think it is something I’ve been thinking about a lot over the last year and I wanted to really get my thoughts together before I said anything. But I think good things are simple and I think what I’m saying is very simple.

For the moment we can ignore the fact that Weill throughout the interview kept patting himself on the back for his “good thing” of an idea. (Although, if close attention is paid, one does get the impression that Weill sincerely believes he came up with the “break up the banks” idea on his own, and it’s almost like he’s preparing to take credit for it if it happens; this is just one of the many layers of delicious comedy that can be peeled back through careful re-examination of this interview). We can just call all that background noise for now.

Instead, let’s just focus on the “when” question Sorkin raised. Because interestingly enough, Weill addressed this very issue at the close of the year Sorkin mentioned, 2009.

It was back then that Weill’s former co-C.E.O. at Citi, John Reed, paved the way for Weill’s future conversion by issuing his own mea culpa on the issue of Too-Big-To-Fail. Reed wrote a letter to the New York Times on October 22, 2009 calling for the same division of commercial banks and investment banks, saying the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had kept those companies separate, was a mistake.

“I would compartmentalize the industry for the same reason you compartmentalize ships,” Reed toldBloomberg later on. “If you have a leak, the leak doesn’t spread and sink the whole vessel. So generally speaking you’d have consumer banking separate from trading bonds and equity.”

Continue reading

Matt Taibbi ~ Ludicrous Times Op-Ed Forgets Entire Year of Wall Street History

Rolling Stone | RS_News | August 2 2012

OPINION ~ It was riotous, side-splitting comedy last week when Sanford Weill, the onetime head of Citibank, went on CNBC to announce that he thought it was time to break up the big banks.

Why this was funny: Through his ambitious (and at the time not yet legal) decision to merge Citibank, Travelers, and Salomon Brothers into one giant wrecking ball of greed, self-dealing and global irresponsibility called Citigroup, Weill more or less single-handedly created the Too-Big-To-Fail problem. You know, the one currently casting that thick, black doomlike shadow over all humanity which, if you look out your window, you can see floating over all our heads this very minute.

Nonetheless, Weill came out last week against Too Big to Fail banks. “I’m suggesting,” he told astonished reporters on a live CNBC interview, “that they be broken up so that the taxpayer will never be at risk…. What we should probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking.”

The interview became an instant YouTube classic. The very funniest part, I thought, was the response of Squawk Box host Andrew Ross Sorkin, the single most credulously slobbering financial reporter on the planet this side of Maria Bartiromo. Even he was so shocked by Weill’s comments that he lost his voice – “I’m speechless,” he said.

At about the 1:20 mark of the clip, just after Weill offered his incredible opinion about the need to break up the banks, any sensible reporter would have pounced. Some version of, “Dude, are you high? Youinvented Too Big To Fail!” would have been the proper response – followed hopefully by a spirited lunge across the set to beat Weill repeatedly about the neck and head with a Swingline stapler, until he screeched out a tearful apology to every last living soul on earth.

Instead, Sorkin took another tack:

“Okay, so then the question becomes – Glass-Steagall,” Sorkin said. “You’re almost referring to bringing back Glass-Steagall, in some respects.”

Continue reading

Greg Hunter ~ Ron Hera – The End Of Cheap Everything

USA Watchdog | July 19 2012

“We are in a computer generated dream world . . . because everything is rigged.”  That’s what Ron Hera of Heraresearch.com said this week when interviewed about living in an age he calls “The end of cheap everything.”  The system isn’t going to collapse, it already has.  Hera says, “I think the system failed in 2008, and we are essentially living on borrowed time.”  As far as the Libor rate rigging fraud, Hera says, “Workers, savers and taxpayers will pay for Libor rate rigging.”

He adds, “There is no end in sight to this crime wave . . . “They will ultimately print the money to paper over the problems,” for the too big to fail banks.   Count on inflation.  Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with Ron Hera.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Greg Hunter ~ Taxpayer Supported Gambling

USA Watchdog | May 22 2012

The $2 billion derivative trading loss JP Morgan announced, about two weeks ago, is growing in size.  It is reportedly now more than triple the original loss.  According to a CNN report, “One thing seems clear about JPMorgan Chase’s $2 billion loss. It’s no longer $2 billion. It’s likely much higher.  The number being bandied about now is closer to a range of $6 billion to $7 billion, according to several people working on trading desks that specialize in the derivatives JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) used to make its trades and from two sources with knowledge of the bank’s positions.” 

The problem derivative losses seem to be growing for JP Morgan, and it’s affecting its share price in a negative way.  Yesterday, The Independent (a British publication) reported, “In a further blow, chairman and chief executive Jamie Dimon has suspended plans to use the US bank’s own funds to buy back $15bn worth of shares. Buybacks are a popular way for firms to use up cash sitting on the balance sheet and prop up the share price.”  A trading loss big enough to halt a $15 billion stock buyback sounds like trouble to me, but that’s not really the big problem.

The largest banks in the U.S. were bailed out by taxpayers, and ever since the financial meltdown in 2008, all get taxpayer backing in the form of FDIC insurance.  The Federal Reserve is also providing near 0% interest rates to the banks while the banks provide savers with interest rates as measured in fractions.  JP Morgan may be the world’s biggest bank and holder of the most derivative exposure ($70.1 trillion), but it is far from the only big bank making risky derivative trades.  Too big to fail (TBTF) banks trading in derivatives are not like taking a risk on car loans, mortgage lending, startup companies or loaning money to help companies grow and add jobs.   The enormous risk the (TBTF) banks make is simply taxpayer supported gambling and nothing else.  Derivatives are mostly debt bets.

Continue reading

Matt Taibbi ~ Fighting Bank of America

Reader Supported News | April 7 2012

OPINION ~ There are two things every American needs to know about Bank of America.

The first is that it’s corrupt. This bank has systematically defrauded almost everyone with whom it has a significant business relationship, cheating investors, insurers, homeowners, shareholders, depositors and the state. It is a giant, raging hurricane of theft and fraud, spinning its way through America and leaving a massive trail of wiped-out retirees and foreclosed-upon families in its wake.

The second is that all of us, as taxpayers, are keeping that hurricane raging. Bank of America is not just a private company that systematically steals from American citizens: it’s a de facto ward of the state that depends heavily upon public support to stay in business. In fact, without the continued generosity of us taxpayers, and the extraordinary indulgence of our regulators and elected officials, this company long ago would have been swallowed up by scandal, mismanagement, prosecution and litigation, and gone out of business. It would have been liquidated and its component parts sold off, perhaps into a series of smaller regional businesses that would have more respect for the law, and be more responsive to their customers.

But Bank of America hasn’t gone out of business, for the simple reason that our government has decided to make it the poster child for the “Too Big To Fail” concept. Because it is considered a “systemically important institution” whose collapse would have a major, Lehman-Brothers-style impact on the economy, two consecutive presidential administrations have taken extraordinary measures to keep Bank of America in business, despite a staggering recent legacy of corruption schemes, many of which were simply overlooked by regulators.

This is why the question of whether or not Bank of America should remain on public life support is so critical to all Americans, and not just those millions who have the misfortune to be customers of the bank, or own shares in the firm, or hold mortgages serviced by the company. This gigantic financial institution is the ultimate symbol of a new kind of corruption at the highest levels of American society: a tendency to marry the near-limitless power of the federal government with increasingly concentrated, increasingly unaccountable private financial interests.

The inevitable result of that new form of corruption is this bank, whose continued, state-supported existence should naturally outrage all Americans, be they conservative or progressive.

Conservatives should be outraged by Bank of America because it is perhaps the biggest welfare dependent in American history, with the $45 billion in bailout money and the $118 billion in state guarantees it’s received since 2008 representing just the crest of a veritable mountain of federal bailout support, most of it doled out by the Obama administration.

Continue reading

Matt Taibbi ~ Push to End Too-Big-To-Fail Goes Mainstream

(Rolling Stone) | RS_News | March 30 2012

OPINION ~ Wall Street is buzzing about the annual report just put out by the Dallas Federal Reserve. In the paper, Harvey Rosenblum, the head of the Dallas Fed’s research department, bluntly calls for the breakup of Too-Big-To-Fail banks like Bank of America, Chase, and Citigroup.

The government’s bottomless sponsorship of these TBTF institutions, Rosenblum writes, has created a “residue of distrust for government, the banking system, the Fed and capitalism itself.”

The report (PDF), entitled, “Choosing the Road to Prosperity: Why We Must End Too-Big-To-Fail Now,” is written in a surprisingly readable style and is illustrated with reader-friendly cartoons and pictographs. It uses rhetoric that, for the Fed, is extremely candid and colorful, going beyond an arcane analysis of monetary policy to focus on the cultural damage of Too-Big-To-Fail.

“These psychological side-effects of Too-Big-To-Fail can’t be measured, but they’re too important to ignore,” Rosenbaum writes. “People disillusioned with capitalism aren’t as eager to engage in productive activities. They’re likely to approach economic decisions with suspicion and cynicism, shying away from the risk-taking that drives entrepreneurial capitalism.”

Much of Rosenbaum’s report sounds like it could have been written by Dylan Ratigan, Nomi Prins, Tyler Durden, Barry Rithotz, or any of the other countless critics of Wall Street that have grown out of the crisis era.

Continue reading

Matt Taibbi ~ BofA – Raging Hurricane of Theft and Fraud

Reader Supported News | March 29 2012

There are two things every American needs to know about Bank of America.

The first is that it’s corrupt. This bank has systematically defrauded almost everyone with whom it has a significant business relationship, cheating investors, insurers, homeowners, shareholders, depositors, and the state. It is a giant, raging hurricane of theft and fraud, spinning its way through America and leaving a massive trail of wiped-out retirees and foreclosed-upon families in its wake.

The second is that all of us, as taxpayers, are keeping that hurricane raging. Bank of America is not just a private company that systematically steals from American citizens: it’s a de facto ward of the state that depends heavily upon public support to stay in business. In fact, without the continued generosity of us taxpayers, and the extraordinary indulgence of our regulators and elected officials, this company long ago would have been swallowed up by scandal, mismanagement, prosecution and litigation, and gone out of business. It would have been liquidated and its component parts sold off, perhaps into a series of smaller regional businesses that would have more respect for the law, and be more responsive to their customers.

But Bank of America hasn’t gone out of business, for the simple reason that our government has decided to make it the poster child for the “Too Big To Fail” concept. Because it is considered a “systemically important institution” whose collapse would have a major, Lehman-Brothers-style impact on the economy, two consecutive presidential administrations have taken extraordinary measures to keep Bank of America in business, despite a staggering recent legacy of corruption schemes, many of which were simply overlooked by regulators.

Continue reading