We have finally reached the point in our financial history where even bankers hate bankers.
Last week, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas issued its 2011 annual report with a 34-page essay, “Why We Must End Too Big To Fail — Now.” The report stops short of calling our nation’s largest banks terrorists, but it does dub them “a clear and present danger to the U.S. economy.”
It begins with a letter from regional Fed president Richard Fisher. “More than half of banking industry assets are on the books of just five institutions,” he complains. “They were a primary culprit in magnifying the financial crisis, and their presence continues to play an important role in prolonging our economic malaise.”
This is not the Tea Party. This is not Occupy Wall Street. This is not some disgruntled Goldman Sachs guy firing off a nastygram to the New York Times on his last day. This is a member of the Federal Reserve itself — an institution that bears responsibility for our banking system devolving into an untenable oligarchy that buys off politicians, captures regulators and eats up our money. This is a member of the establishment saying Too-Big-To-Fail, or TBTF, must die.
Too big to fail is too big to live (and I’m a free markets, Enlightenment, Austrian school guy).
Well, was the South Sea Company too big to fail? Were Baring Brothers, or Leaman Brothers? Was Argentina? Is Greece? More of a question I suppose: Is the United States too big to fail? If it isn’t, then the rest of us are probably for the chop as well. Which is why we would be very grateful if the US would please sort out its finances.
I’m employed by one of these monsters and a break up might not be in my personal best interest. That said, I’m all for it. The concentration of giant institutions does not benefit the stability of the industry or the national economy. But I’ll bet my annual salary that back in the ’80’s and 90’s the Dallas Fed was one of the main supporters of the merger mania that created these beasts.