Reply #17: Dean Baker: Summers assertion "Not True" [View All]

[chill_wind]

"The U.S. Needs TBTF Banks," Because Larry Summers Says it, Doesn't Mean it's True
Tuesday, 27 April 2010 04:54

The Post has a piece this morning on Delaware Senator Ted Kaufman and his proposal for breaking up the big banks. At one point it presents a quote from Larry Summers, the head of President Obama's National Economic Council: "Most observers who study this believe that to try to break banks up into a lot of little pieces would hurt our ability to try to serve large companies, and hurt the competitiveness of the United States."

It would have been worth pointing out to readers that Summers' asssertion is not obviously true. Many prominent experts on banking, including two current regional Federal Reserve Bank presidents and Simon Johnson, the former chief economist at the IMF, have argued that the country does not need banks that are as large as the too big to fail institutions that would be broken up under Senator Kaufman's amendment.

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