Bernie Sanders to Banks: It’s Time to Break Up [View all]

[cali]

By Sophia Yan | May 11, 2012 4:04 PM EDT |
Posted in Capitol Hill, Politics


Washington’s anti-Wall Street crowd just got really, really lucky.

JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s announcement yesterday of a $2 billion trading loss from a steep bet it made is giving congressmen like Senator Bernie Sanders a renewed boost in their crusade against big banks.

Sanders is taking JPMorgan’s slipup to “reaffirm” his view to Americans that the six largest banks in the U.S. must be split up to help prevent another massive bailout. That’s something Sanders thinks really could happen with the financial industry, which he has called “the most powerful, dangerous and secretive” in the U.S.

Assets from those banks — Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan — are equal to two-thirds U.S. GDP, he says. And with such deep pockets, they ought to “be investing in the productive economy creating jobs and improving our standard of living,” Sanders says.

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http://go.bloomberg.com/political-economy/2012-05-11/bernie-sanders-to-banks-its-time-to-break-up/