Banking `Toxic Cocktail' Is Too Big to Forget: Simon Johnson

By Simon Johnson - Jan 26, 2011

Bloomberg Opinion

As a senator from Delaware in 2009- 10, Ted Kaufman fought long and hard against the systemic dangers posed by large, highly leveraged U.S. banks. When he left the Senate, at the end of the last Congress, there were some who supposed that his arguments would now get less attention at least from mainstream thinking.

But far from dying out, the points Kaufman made seem to have taken hold within influential government circles.

The latest quarterly report from Neil Barofsky, the special inspector-general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, is the best official articulation yet of why too big to fail is here to stay. In its executive summary, the document, which was released this week, discusses “perhaps TARP’s most significant legacy, the moral hazard and potentially disastrous consequences associated with the continued existence of financial institutions that are ‘too big to fail.’”