So, If Some Financial Institutions are 'Too Big' to Fail, Why Do We Let Them Get So Big?

[JCMach1]

a modest question I think given the price tag...

These are the 21st century equivalent of the railroads and Standard Oil in the Gilded Age. One easy way to eliminate risk... beef up anti-trust laws.

Instead what is happening? Just how big is BOA and CITI now? And what about Barclays? We even outsource our Robber Barons apparently.

[Richardo]

1. Bingo.

:applause:

The question every deregulation advocate should be forced to answer is: why was this industry regulated in the first place?

[DearAbby]

2. Why arent we busting them up for the sake of national security?

you know....if a financial institution is so big that if it failed it would destroy this country, why arent we busting them up?

[JCMach1]

4. Exactly, why a loan to AIG... the US should sell off the assets

once the crises is over... Easy to do, our country will own 79%... Oh wait, it's the old bait and switch... it's actually the FEDERAL RESERVE that will own 79% stake.

[elleng]

3. Properly ENFORCE

anti-trust laws.

Certainly won't ELIMINATE risk, but could do a lot to minimize it.

[Robbien]

5. The anti-trust laws are just fine as they are. The problem is, everyone is ignoring them

Which is the same situation all over the place in this GOP world. Corruption and wild sex parties on the taxpayer's dime is also against the law, but you don't see anyone being hauled away in handcuffs for engaging in those activities either.

[midnight armadillo]

6. That's the 85,000,000,000 lb gorilla, isn't it?

These institutions manage a tremendous amount of wealth and have a correspondingly large influence on regulation and government affairs. Since the end of the Depression there haven't been any financial crises big enough to warrant busting up the biggest banks into smaller ones. Also, no one enforces anti-trust anymore.

[EC]

7. Well there used to be anti-Monopoly laws

and regulations...

[Barack_America]

8. They're too big to fail and the average working American is too small to succeed.

That is Republican policy in a nutshell.

[JCMach1]

9. Exactly... imagine with the 300 odd billion we have thrown around

the FED could have re-financed a huge amount of the mortgage market. That would have saved the little guy and the big guys.

Instead, let the little guy fail and bail out the corporate gorillas.

:grr:

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. Because we stopped preventing monopolies a while ago

Capitalism requires competition

Adam Smith warned us AGAINST monopolies

Hell's bells he used the hand of the market place ONCE in the whole book and it does not mean what the free marketeers say it means

Adam Smith is rolling in his grave

[JCMach1]

11. Even Libertarians should agree with that... that was the whole point of 'Atlas Shrugged'

But wait, the Right-libertarians over-generalized it as a metaphor for Communism and Socialism.



For the record: Am not a libertarian... just deconstructing a bit of the neo-con me$$... I mean mindset.