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Bernie Sanders To Introduce Bill To Break Up The Big Banks

Nonsense, " reasonable " people have no idea what they're taking about.

Its not " reasonable " to give a Government or a President who opposes the Free market on principle the power to be the arbiter of " fairness ".

Reasonable people don't know what their talking about? Right, ok. And who's arguing for any one person to arbitrarily decide what fair markets and fair trade policies should be, hmm? And I can assure you that you'd not be happy in a scenario in which there were no restrictions and regulations imposed upon business and banking.
 
I agree, and one legal entity that might be appropriate would be the anti-trust laws.

the thing about anti-trust laws is that they are entirely geared towards enforcing competition between rival firms/industries..... "too big to fail" is NOT a competition problem, nor did the relative size of these firms lead to the problems we had( thier actions, however, did)
 
I agree.

One of the hallmarks of free-market capitalism is the weak & inefficient fail.

Any less, and we no longer have free markets!

the closest thing we have to a free market is the black market.

the financial sector can be described as many things.. a" free market" is not one of them... not even close.

there can be an argument made that heavy regulations results in firms finding creative ways around those regualtions in order to profit or gain advantage... such was, indeed, the nature of Credit Default Swaps ( before the crash, outstanding CDSs were valued at over 60 trillion dollars... none of them regulated or reported to govt agencies)
 
Anyone that proposes to break up a business should be sued and imprisoned. It's private property and you have no right to split it up. Period.
 
Banks that are too big to fail are to big to exist. I support the principal behind his proposal.

So you would support breaking Ford, GM, Chrysler, MS, Apple, Cargill, Koch Industries or Bechtel? A failure by any of these companies would be devastating to our economy.
 
And we could always threaten to unleash the ultimate 'accountability punitive measure': "So, you want a socialist solution to your failures? Get your act together or we'll nationalize you"! :mrgreen:

I agree, we could control this with proper regulation - the problem is: the regulators are owned by the regulated!

That's a big problem ...

When you can just order around and split up business in any way you damn well please exactly why would you officially announce a government takeover? All you have to do is control it and let people believe property is owned by the people.
 
it doesn't neccessarily mean lettign them fall, though that is an option..... another option might be bailing them out with certain terms to be guarateed ( which we didn't do in this last fiasco)
there are lots of firms that would cause great pain to our economy if we allowed them to fail, but no one is callign to break up GM or Ford..or GE... or any of the big firms..... targeting banks is simply populist claptrap.

There are clearly huge firms in the US outside of finance, but I don't think the fall of any of them would be as disastrous as the banking system. Partly because of the reasons you state, that it is so incestuous. If Google/Apple/M$/Exxon went under the ripples would be huge but not on the scale of the banking crisis. GM did go under and though there was some public assistance it hardly triggered a 2010 crisis. At the end of the day these companies sell their own product, banks do not.

the aim isn't to kill them off or drive them into poverty.. it's to change the behavior....
if that dude was a billionaire before, leaving him with a 100 million is probably still a good punishment.... banishing him from his tradecraft would be a nice addition, though.

I think he's banished in all but name due to his name being dragged through the mud! That said, the wall street 'kingpins', although unemployed, now have ample time to spend their millions on golf and mansions and fast cars. There was nothing much on criminal charges or prosecutions. I understand that these people worked hard to get where they are, but that doesn't excuse them from doing their time.

I tink it would simply mean, in the event of a crisis, that we would have wider and depper problems to address... you have to consider that the entire indutry is incestuous by nature...big banks, small banks, medium banks... they all live and die by each others swords.
... and then there is the fact that we would end up with far more firms requiring far more resources to adequately if we split them up.
I don't think we would decrease any risks by splitting them up...I think the root problems would get worse.

it's going to take some very smart folks to solve these problems... ideologues shouldn't apply or even pretend to think they have the answers to these very complex issues...even if those "solutions" sound good to the uninformed populace.
for my money, the solutions are going to come from the banks themselves... they have a vested interests in solving principal-agent problems, and they have the people whom are smart enough to do so....teh federal government, and hte state government, just have ot provide " incentives" for them to do so... incentives like " solve it or spend a ton of time in club fed":lol:
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More firms would require far more resources to operate. I think that is just a price we have to pay for reduced risk. Whether the risk decreases or not depends on the operating procedures of each of the individual banks. One would hope that with more smaller firms out there only the ones that operate in an overtly risky way will be the ones to go down in the event of a crash, whilst the not so risky ones would stay up. It's a complicated scenario because part of the reason the big firms got so big in the first place is because they were happy to take those risks!

The solution coming from within the banks is a nice angle I hadn't considered. The finance sector is vacuuming up the smartest college kids left right and center. I do think that the 'incentives' that you speak of may be as difficult to implement as an actual solution!
 
Bernie Sanders understands that an economy cannot function properly with all of the wealth and power concentrated at the top. He understands that when the people on the bottom are making more money it stimulates the economy. He understands that breaking up monopolies and creating competition is how you make the market healthier. He understands capitalism better than his Republican counterparts.

The banking sector has literally nothing to do with capitalism.
 
the thing about anti-trust laws is that they are entirely geared towards enforcing competition between rival firms/industries..... "too big to fail" is NOT a competition problem, nor did the relative size of these firms lead to the problems we had( thier actions, however, did)

"Too big to fail" may not have caused the problems, but it limited the possible solutions. We had to bail out the big banks to prevent the major consequences to the economy likely to occur of they were allowed to fail. We should not allow financial institutions to get so big that their failure would impact the economy significantly.
 
"Too big to fail" may not have caused the problems, but it limited the possible solutions. We had to bail out the big banks to prevent the major consequences to the economy likely to occur of they were allowed to fail. We should not allow financial institutions to get so big that their failure would impact the economy significantly.

how big... exactly.... is " too big"?

and why would it matter how big a bank was if its actions were regulated to mitigate systemic risk?
 
how big... exactly.... is " too big"?

and why would it matter how big a bank was if its actions were regulated to mitigate systemic risk?

I don't know where to draw the line for "too bog." That should be done by experts. As we saw with derivatives, excessively risky activities can be legal.
 
I don't know where to draw the line for "too bog." That should be done by experts. As we saw with derivatives, excessively risky activities can be legal.

experts aren't going to set a limit... the experts work for the banks.

and that's true about derivatives, they were legal ( so much for govt. experts knowing what they are doing, eh?).... and it should, among other things, make you ponder why deriviatives were invented in the first place.
 
I remember back in the 80's when they changed the rules to allow interstate banking. Now, apparently we want to go back to the old way. Personally, I think it is a good idea. I would make it optional, though. Change the FDIC rules to exclude interstate banks from deposit insurance. The banks can decide and, obviously, the net result will be fewer interstate banks. They talk about these banks being too big to fail. I think of them as too big to succeed.
 
All I hear from you in this thread is faint bleating about 'socialism', 'Bernie doesn't have a clue' and 'Obama sucks'. Even if the points you are making were even related to OP, you're not even substantiating them. Are you even going to attempt to discuss the actual topic at hand?



So our options are to either limit the size of these institutions, or implement further regulation as to what they can do (a la Glass Steagal). The problem with just holding them accountable is that we can't hold them accountable because they're too big. If we did hold them accountable, then they would take down half the economy with them, because they're too big to fail.

Bernie doesn't have a clue.

I've read through his 12 point plan so I should know.

The GSEs were far more complicit in creating the Subprime mortgage crisis than any bank was.

They were the only two Financial entities investigated by the SEC for their involvement in misreporting their massive amounts of debt and profits

But I never hear leftist and or Sanders rail against their unprecedented level of corruption and thats mainly because they were run and protected by the Democrats.

Sanders is more of the same. Obama's destructive ideology on steroids and his policies would crater whats left of this already weak economy.

And Glass Steagal had little to do with the Subprime mortgage crisis.

2 years before it was passed Freddie. mac guaranteed 380 Million dollars in Subprime backed securities.
 
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"Too big to fail" may not have caused the problems, but it limited the possible solutions. We had to bail out the big banks to prevent the major consequences to the economy likely to occur of they were allowed to fail. We should not allow financial institutions to get so big that their failure would impact the economy significantly.

Funny that, the Bush administration basically said the very same thing about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac back in 2002.

Even warned of the systemic economic consequences that could arise from two massive Financial entities not being regulated thoroughly.

The Banks were bailed out and they paid it back.

Fannie and Freddie were declared insolvent, and the US took om 5 Trillion dollars of their worthless debt.

The US FED has taken on another 3 Trillion plus more.

So 750 Billion in TARP is paid bqck qnd Trillions in GSE securities and loans get piled onto the Treasury.

And not a word from Bernie about it. He's a Socialist, they have the priorities a little backwards.
 
It's kind of sad that a century after Roosevelt and Taft devoted themselves to trust busting, we have to do it again.
 
It's kind of sad that a century after Roosevelt and Taft devoted themselves to trust busting, we have to do it again.

The fight against tyranny never ends.
 
you can't build a rickety skyscraper in your neighborhood because if it falls, it's going to take out a lot of other houses with it. the financial industry should be no different. we learned a couple things from 2008, but not nearly enough.
 
you can't build a rickety skyscraper in your neighborhood because if it falls, it's going to take out a lot of other houses with it. the financial industry should be no different. we learned a couple things from 2008, but not nearly enough.

You can say that again.

SO MUCH wasn't learned from that lesson, from the damage caused by the TWO skyscrapers that fell and took out a economy.

Those two skyscrapers that are no where in Bernies or Warrens rhetoric.
 
You can say that again.

SO MUCH wasn't learned from that lesson, from the damage caused by the TWO skyscrapers that fell and took out a economy.

Those two skyscrapers that are no where in Bernies or Warrens rhetoric.

so you agree that all of the financial entities that needed bailouts should be broken up into smaller, more sustainable pieces?
 
so you agree that all of the financial entities that needed bailouts should be broken up into smaller, more sustainable pieces?

And what would that accomplish ?

It would only perpetuate the false narrative used by the Democrats back in 2008 so they could cover their asses.

They blamed the banks and or Bush for the Financial crisis.

Since I sincerely don't want my Country to go through anything like that again so I think its imperative that we should identify and address the REAL perpetrators of the Subprime mortgage crisis.

Not waste time ans energy chasing false narratives for the Democrats sake.
 
And what would that accomplish ?

by preventing massive monolithic and unstable banks from collapsing the economy via risky gambling.

It would only perpetuate the false narrative used by the Democrats back in 2008 so they could cover their asses.

They blamed the banks and or Bush for the Financial crisis.

Since I sincerely don't want my Country to go through anything like that again so I think its imperative that we should identify and address the REAL perpetrators of the Subprime mortgage crisis.

Not waste time ans energy chasing false narratives for the Democrats sake.

so, you only support breaking up massive and unstable financial institutions if you can classify them as "government." i'm fine with breaking up both. too big to fail is too big to exist, and more competition is a good thing.

folks, this is an excellent illustration of how this Repub / Dem duopoly bull**** is ****ing us all over. it's never about solving the problem. instead, it's nearly always about my tribe vs yours. this is a fundamental problem.
 
by preventing massive monolithic and unstable banks from collapsing the economy via risky gambling.



so, you only support breaking up massive and unstable financial institutions if you can classify them as "government." i'm fine with breaking up both. too big to fail is too big to exist, and more competition is a good thing.

folks, this is an excellent illustration of how this Repub / Dem duopoly bull**** is ****ing us all over. it's never about solving the problem. instead, it's nearly always about my tribe vs yours. this is a fundamental problem.

No I support identifying and then addressing the issues that led to the 2008 Subprime mortgage crisis, not diverting attention away because its Politically inconvenient for one Political party.

The GSEs were tax exempt, exempt from SEC reporting requirements, had access to a 4 Billion dollar line of credit straight from the US Treasury that NO Bank could touch , had a " AAA " debt status, could run their business with almost no equity or Capital requirements and were the single largest purchaser of both Securities backed by Subprime loans and Subprime loans themselves.

They created demand for a toxic product, they distributed TRILLIONS in Securities backed by Subprime loans and they purchased Trillions in Subprime loans and Securities and they were being run like ENRON on steroids.

The GSEs hid over a Trillion dollars in Subprime debt while they were the primary consumer of Securities backed by Subprime loans amd while they were getting Billions of dollars straight from the US Treasury. ( 2011 SEC investigation )

There's a word for that. Its called Securities fraud. In this case it was unprecedented securities fraud.

There's a good reason they were the only two Financial entities that were charged and investigated by the SEC.

I haven't heard Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren address this ONCE.

While they perpetuate this " too big to fail " narrative and whine about Bailouts, over 5 Trillion dollars in GSE debt now sits on the books of the Treasury while the US FED buys another 3 Trillion from Banks via QE.

So there's TARP, ( paid back ) and then there's the Trillions in GSE debt that we inherited. I think you guys have your priorities a little mixed up
 
so you agree that all of the financial entities that needed bailouts should be broken up into smaller, more sustainable pieces?

What makes you believe that the smaller pieces would be sustainable, and why?
 
No I support identifying and then addressing the issues that led to the 2008 Subprime mortgage crisis, not diverting attention away because its Politically inconvenient for one Political party.

The GSEs were tax exempt, exempt from SEC reporting requirements, had access to a 4 Billion dollar line of credit straight from the US Treasury that NO Bank could touch , had a " AAA " debt status, could run their business with almost no equity or Capital requirements and were the single largest purchaser of both Securities backed by Subprime loans and Subprime loans themselves.

They created demand for a toxic product, they distributed TRILLIONS in Securities backed by Subprime loans and they purchased Trillions in Subprime loans and Securities and they were being run like ENRON on steroids.

The GSEs hid over a Trillion dollars in Subprime debt while they were the primary consumer of Securities backed by Subprime loans amd while they were getting Billions of dollars straight from the US Treasury. ( 2011 SEC investigation )

There's a word for that. Its called Securities fraud. In this case it was unprecedented securities fraud.

There's a good reason they were the only two Financial entities that were charged and investigated by the SEC.

I haven't heard Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren address this ONCE.

While they perpetuate this " too big to fail " narrative and whine about Bailouts, over 5 Trillion dollars in GSE debt now sits on the books of the Treasury while the US FED buys another 3 Trillion from Banks via QE.

So there's TARP, ( paid back ) and then there's the Trillions in GSE debt that we inherited. I think you guys have your priorities a little mixed up

"you guys." lol. refer to my earlier post.

once again, you are only willing to see one part of the problem. GSEs didn't cause the crash all by themselves, and casino gambling wasn't just limited to the public sector. far from it.
 
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