Did You Know?

Crazy! These numbers are crazy!
by Charlie Leck

Did you know that the nation’s four largest banks – Bank of America, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo – hold assets of more than 7.4 trillion dollars?

That’s about half of our entire GDP (gross domestic product).

What if – just imagine it – what if any one of these banks was to collapse? I think the world-wide economy would be thrown into chaos.

That's why this expression – too big to fail – is thrown around all the time.

How did we allow any bank to get so big? Whatever happened to bank regulation? Whatever were we thinking?

An interesting bill, proposing to break up these big banks, has been introduced in the U.S. Senate. It’s called ‘the SAFE Banking Act (S. 3241).

This is an issue to keep your eyes on in the coming weeks and months. The bill also addresses the regulation of derivative investments and will likely not allow banks to deal in them.