By Simon Johnson
Global megabanks and their friends are pushing back hard against the idea that additional reforms are needed – beyond what is supposed to be implemented as part of the Dodd-Frank 2010 financial legislation. The latest salvo comes from Goldman Sachs which, in a recent report, “Measuring the TBTF effect on bond pricing,” denied there is any such thing as downside protection provided by the official sector to creditors of “too big to fail” financial conglomerates.
The Goldman document appears hot on the heels of similar arguments in papers by such organizations as Davis Polk (a leading law firm for big banks), the Bipartisan Policy Center (where the writing is done by a committee comprised mostly of people who work closely with big banks), and JP Morgan Chase (a big bank). This is not any kind of conspiracy but rather parallel messages expressed by people with convergent interests, perhaps with the thought that a steady drumbeat will help sway the consensus back towards the banks’ point of view. But the Goldman Sachs team actually concedes, point blank, that too big to fail does exist — punching a big hole in the case painstakingly built by its allies. Continue reading


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