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Is ‘too big to fail’ a permanent state?

Kai Ryssdal Mar 14, 2013
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Is ‘too big to fail’ a permanent state?

Kai Ryssdal Mar 14, 2013
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Today is the fifth anniversary of the rescue of Bear Stearns by the Federal Reserve. The very moment, perhaps, when “too big to fail” became a standard part of our economic lexicon.

To commemorate the five-year anniversary, Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, will speak at the big political conference going on this week, the Conservative Political Action Committee, or CPAC, where he’s going to say we ought to break up the big banks. That they are still “too big to fail.”

“The banks only got bigger following the financial crisis,” said John Carney from CNBC. “Regulators and their bosses on Capitol Hill, the congressmen and senators,are mostly mentally-captured by the big banks. They just think that this is the way things have to be.”

Carney thinks Fisher will get a warm welcome at CPAC this weekend.

“This really seems to be something that bridges the political spectrum where you have people on the left saying we should do something and people on the right,” said Carney.

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