Too Big to Fail

13 Stories

5 Big Banks Get Failing Grades on 'Living Wills'

They need to retool emergency plans quickly

(Newser) - Federal regulators say five of the biggest banks in the US haven't worked out strong plans for how they might reshape themselves in case of failure, which could leave them unable to survive without another taxpayer bailout, reports the AP . JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Bank of...

BofA Just Showed How Easy It Is to Lose $4B
 BofA Just Showed How Easy It Is to Lose $4B
OPINION
Apr 28, 2014 12:15 PM CDT

BofA Just Showed How Easy It Is to Lose $4B

Is bank too big to keep track of its assets?

(Newser) - Bank of America canceled a planned share buyback program today, after realizing that it had made a tiny little accounting error—and by "tiny little," we mean "$4 billion." "The market's reaction, with about $10 billion of BofA's market value wiped out, was...

JPMorgan Report Brings Back Calls to Break Up Banks

'Epic breakdown' in oversight led to $6B loss

(Newser) - A Senate subcommittee report on JPMorgan Chase has slammed America's biggest financial institution so hard for trying to hide $6 billion in losses tied to the "London Whale" fiasco that business analysts are once again talking about the need to break up the biggest banks, reports Bloomberg . JPMorgan...

Obama Declares Big Banks Too Big to Jail
 Obama Declares Big Banks Too Big to Jail
OPINION
Dec 12, 2012 1:14 PM CST

Obama Declares Big Banks Too Big to Jail

Decision not to prosecute bank's money laundering sparks outrage

(Newser) - The Obama administration officially bought into the idea that big banks are "too big to jail" yesterday, by deciding to fine HSBC instead of criminally prosecuting its vast money laundering operation—which funneled cash to Mexican drug cartels and Saudi banks with ties to al-Qaeda. The stated reason? The...

JPMorgan Fiasco Exposes Hapless Regulators
JPMorgan Fiasco Exposes Hapless Regulators
OPINION
Jun 7, 2012 12:36 PM CDT

JPMorgan Fiasco Exposes Hapless Regulators

Nicole Gelinas complains that too big to fail is still all too real

(Newser) - How pathetic was the supposed financial reform of the Dodd-Frank bill? So bad that not only did it not prevent JPMorgan's massive trading loss, no one is sure if it was even supposed to, writes Nicole Gelinas of the New York Post . The bill is supposed to prohibit "...

More Than 2 Years Later, Secrets of Bailout Emerge

Banks took in billions of dollars, even as they claimed to be healthy

(Newser) - For more than two years, the Fed and the banks it bailed out during the 2007 to 2009 financial crisis have kept many of the details of the massive, multi-trillion-dollar bailout a secret. But, thanks to Freedom of Information Act requests, 29,000 pages of bailout details are pouring out...

Big Banks Still Think We're Chumps
 Big Banks 
 Still Think 
 We're Chumps 
OPINION
Sep 13, 2010 10:42 AM CDT

Big Banks Still Think We're Chumps

Citigroup hasn't learned its lesson from financial crisis

(Newser) - Have the big banks learned their lesson from the financial crisis? Not a chance, writes Charlie Gasparino in the Daily Beast . Citigroup’s recent attempt to bar a well-respected financial analyst from questioning its executives about accounting practices, plus new documents proving the bank’s top brass knew about its...

Bernanke: We Must Fix the 'Too Big to Fail' Problem

Fed chair defends financial crisis actions

(Newser) - The government must be ready to close even the biggest banks if they threaten to bring down the financial system, Ben Bernanke said today, in testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. "If the crisis has a single lesson, it is that the too-big-to-fail problem must be solved,"...

Republicans Want to Abolish Financial Firemen
Republicans Want to Abolish Financial Firemen
Paul Krugman
Apr 16, 2010 9:08 AM CDT

Republicans Want to Abolish Financial Firemen

McConnell is doing Wall Street's bidding

(Newser) - Mitch McConnell wants to abolish fire departments—they just bail out burning buildings. We won’t get out of this mess until the biggest buildings are allowed to burn! That’s essentially what McConnell’s latest assault on financial reform amounts to, writes Paul Krugman in the New York Times ...

Crazy Karzai Regime Is 'Too Big to Fail'

Erratic Afghan leader understands how deep US is in, acts accordingly

(Newser) - The US is engaged in “asymmetrical” warfare with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, Fred Kaplan writes, but it also suffers an asymmetrical relationship with an increasingly erratic head of state—Hamid Karzai. His regime “depends entirely on the United States,” sure, but because Western powers “have—and...

Forget About 'Too Big to Fail'
Forget About  'Too Big to Fail'
Paul Krugman
Apr 2, 2010 8:15 AM CDT

Forget About 'Too Big to Fail'

Size doesn't matter; the real problem is unregulated 'shadow banking'

(Newser) - Paul Krugman doesn't buy the "too big to fail" argument for a simple reason: "It’s perfectly possible to have a financial crisis that mainly takes the form of a run on smaller institutions." Big banks aren't the problem, he writes in the New York Times . We...

Top F***ing Books About the Financial Crisis

Maybe all the profanity will keep you reading

(Newser) - There are so many books about the financial crisis, how does one choose which to read first? One method: Go for the one with the most instances of the word “f---.” Conveniently enough, Paul Kedrosky has assembled a handy list. Not big on the idea of the f-word...

Times Star Sorkin: Too Cozy With Wall Street?

Colleagues clash with Too Big to Fail author

(Newser) - Andrew Ross Sorkin isn't the only entrepreneurial writer in the New York Times stable, but he might be the most successful, with his DealBook blog and newsletter, his Times column, and now his bestseller, Too Big to Fail making him ubiquitous in the media these days. “It’s hard...

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