Sanders re-introduces bill breaking up big firms

“At a time when the middle-class is disappearing due to greed and recklessness on Wall Street, it is unconscionable that big banks are rewarding the same executives that caused the worst financial crisis since the 1930s with record-breaking pay packages,” the senator said in prepared remarks. “Instead of doling out huge bonuses, Wall Street should be investing much of this money into the job-creating productive economy. These Wall Street executives would not have jobs today if working-class taxpayers did not bail them out.” 

Sanders states that three out of the four largest banks in America (JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo) are now larger then before they received taxpayer bailout funds. The four largest banks in America have assets equal to more than 50 percent of the entire annual U.S. gross domestic product and now issue two-thirds of all credit cards, half of the mortgages, and control nearly 40 percent of all bank deposits. 

Five American banks (JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) own 95 percent of the $290 trillion in risky derivatives held at commercial banks, according to the senator.  

His bill, the Too Big To Exist Act, would require the Treasury Department within one year to break up commercial banks, investment banks, hedge funds and insurance companies that have grown so large that a failure would have a catastrophic effect on the financial system or the U.S. economy without the government supplying another bailout.