To the Point
Are America's Financial Institutions Still 'Too Big to Fail?'
Five years ago this week, the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers led to America's worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The Bush and Obama Administrations used billions of taxpayer dollars to bail out banks that were so big their failure would have hurt the economy even more. Now some of those banks are bigger than ever.
By Warren Olney • • 1 min readFive years ago this week, the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers led to America's worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The Bush and Obama Administrations used billions of taxpayer dollars to bail out banks that were so big their failure would have hurt the economy even more. Now some of those banks are bigger than ever. Will that lead to another round of excessive risk-taking by executives and investors confident of another government bailout? JP Morgan Chase is America's biggest bank. Today, JP Morgan Chase made a rare admission that it did wrong — to the tune of $920 million in fines to four regulatory agencies. The Dodd-Frank bill was supposed to prevent a repeat of the Great Recession. We talk to former Congressman Barney Frank and others. Should Main Street be worried about the future of Wall Street?
