In the aftermath of the 2007 housing market crash which caused the Great Recession, a mantra emerged that the nation needed to do something about “too big to fail” banks. It was part of the impetus for the Dodd-Frank Act, signed in July 2010, which President Obama’s administration heralded as “the most far-reaching Wall Street reform in history.”
Democrat Hillary Clinton has vowed to “build on the progress we’ve made under President Obama” with a Wall Street reform plan that calls for ensuring “no firm is ever too big and too risky to be managed effectively.” Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, has been dismissive of reform efforts to date, calling Dodd-Frank “a very modest piece of legislation.”
So, six years after the passage of the most sweeping big bank reform in history, how’s it going on the too-big-to-fail front?
