SIMON JOHNSON JANUARY 22, 2010
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The White House background briefing is that their proposals would freeze biggest bank size “as is”--this makes no sense at all.
Twenty years of reckless expansion, a massive crisis, and the most generous bailout in human history are not a recipe for “right” sized banks. There is a lot of work the administration hasn’t done on the details--this is a classic policy scramble, in which ducks have not been lined up. But we should treat this as the public comment phase for potentially sensible principles--and an opportunity to propose workable details. The banks are already hard at work, pushing in the other direction.
It’s a big potential policy change, and my litmus test is simple--does it, at the end of the day, imply breaking Goldman Sachs up into 4 or 5 independent pieces?
