Talk:Too big to fail

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Lead section
Is it just me, or is this article lacking a general lead section for newbies like me? --KushalClick me! write to me 15:23, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Bear Stearns
The beginning section that "refutes" "too big to fail" is not a reliable source. This piece is very amateur and of poor quality. 71.52.96.109 (talk) 02:36, 15 November 2009 (UTC)LostTacos

This page needs to have additional information regarding the Bear Stearns debacle.

Joel2600 (talk) 17:52, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Moody's JDA
Moody's joint default analysis is based somewhat on the premise of this theory and should be in the article. Deet (talk) 03:04, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Page move
I have moved the page from "Too Big To Fail" to "Too Big To Fail" Chendy (talk) 13:00, 21 September 2008 (UTC)


 * It should be at "Too big to fail". This is not a proper name, so it should not be capitalized.  Croctotheface (talk) 16:38, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

US only?
Does this apply to countries other than the USA? The article should be clarified either way. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dhollm (talk • contribs) 13:54, 26 September 2008 (UTC) I agree that this potentially an error. My understanding is that it has nothing to do with just the US. In the 1998 Emerging Market Crisis, I'm fairly certain that Russia was thought to be "Too Big to Fail". If that is the case, this entry appears to be in error. Can someone clarify(69.86.55.199 (talk) 19:44, 11 December 2008 (UTC)).

This is mainly an American phenomenon. It is the great potential of politicians and economists in the US to name Anything in a way that dictates a preformed position.Ahmed badda (talk) 11:29, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The phenomenon [of companies being so big and intertwined with all sectors of a nation's economy such as that failure of which would be catastrophic] may well exist in other countries; however, the whole debate about whether government(s) should do anything at all about it would be a total non-issue; indeed, the debate would be more about whether to completely nationalize the company or not, even in such capitalist countries as the UK, Iceland, Ireland, etc. Shanoman (talk) 02:56, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


 * This addition is in response to the Wiki advice to add a "worldwide view", and cites to an Asian Wall Street Journal article that, in its first paragraph, discusses the "too big to fail" policy in the context of the largest bankruptcy in the history of the People's Republic of China. In fact, the main claim to fame of Vice Premier's Wang Qishan, who just met with Obama in Washington last week, was his capable handling of this bankruptcy (See Secretary Paulson's description of Wang in Time magazine).The 2009 TIME 100 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tkhorse (talk • contribs) 14:47, 1 August 2009 (UTC)


 * It should be pointed out that most economists would view the bailouts of Citi, JPM and a few others as being important to the global community. If the financial sector of America had collapsed it would have been devestating for the global economy.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.47.99.2 (talk) 14:47, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Biased? POV?
Not only is this article "US-centric"; it seems to me that this entire article is pretty slanted towards one point of view, namely towards that of total laissez-faire and total opposition to the concept of any justifiable or allowable government intervention whatsoever (a stance I'm quite familiar with since it was formerly my explicit philosophy, but no longer). Now I'm an inclusionist, not a deletionist, so it's not that I want to eliminate any information; I just think more information should be included so as to balance it. I'm not going to do it because I'm sure I'm too biased now. What particularly stands out as slanted is the 2nd and 3rd sentences of the 1st paragraph:

This means that it might encourage recklessness since the government would pick up the pieces in the event it was about to go out of business.[1] The phrase has also been more broadly applied to refer to a government's policy to bail out any corporation.

It is my understanding that the term "too big to fail" means that a company is considered too large, important, intertwined, and vital to the overall economy that its collapse leads to widespread unraveling of the financial sector and chaos throughout the economy, leading ultimately to something like a great depression (or worse? worst?). Also, the 3rd paragraph:

Some Critics see the policy as wrong and counter productive. They think big banks should be left to fail if their risk management was not effective[2]. [3]

These statements, although sourced, are pretty clearly representative of only the view that all bailouts are bad, the government shouldn't do anything (or even exist at all), etc. These views, although popular (and/or dogmatic doctrine?) on one side of the political debate, are hardly the only ones, and certainly not the consensus among economists or other experts, even pro-capitalist ones. This article makes it look like the above view point is an absolute objective fact of reality, uncontested by anyone whose opinion or authority (expertise) matters. I would be very much surprised if that is indeed the case (by the way, I edited what I believed to be a punctuation error in the first sentence; other than that, I'm not touching this!). Shanoman (talk) 02:56, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Good points, all. The only thing that really bugs me at the moment is the following in the lead: "This results in reckless behavior of the institution..." Seems this could use a change to "This may encourage reckless behavior of the institution..." Markjmillan (talk) 18:20, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Very dated history
The history given here is a very dated history, when most readers coming to this article are thinking of General Motors and Bear Stearns and AIG in late 2008 and this year. Northern Rock and other firms abroad are also relevant examples. --DThomsen8 (talk) 23:49, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Merge proposal with systemic risk
There's a merge proposal on the frontpage of this article, and no section here yet, so here it is.


 * Oppose This article has the potential to delve both into the political and economic aspects of the "too big to fail" idea. Merging it into a pure economic theory article will limit its scope too narrowly and make a worse encyclopedia.  Further, the phenomenon has become incredibly notable in present political discourse, and there is enough information out there to make a really excellent stand-alone article on it.

Mention of Move Your Money?
Shouldn't this article refer to http://moveyourmoney.info/ Move Your Money], an initiative that aims in downsizing big banks by simply moving savings to smaller banks? Joepnl (talk) 19:31, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * It's kind of a fringey and US-centric idea, but possibly worthy of mention. Perspective would be critical, ie it's a small movement that can't really succeed (Goldman, for example, has next to no retail deposits).  It's similar to those silly movements to get everyone to boycott such and such a gas station, and should be kept in that perspective.  The idea is getting some novelty traction since it appeared on Huffington Post. --JayHenry (talk) 21:42, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * The idea itself is not US-centric I think. Though there is not a similar initiative elsewhere that I know of, I do see similar things happening in Europe (smaller banks, especially the "sustainable" ones suddenly get major attention in the media, and the "prudent" banks have started big advertising themselves as such). "Move your money" may not be the conclusive solution to banks being "too big to fail", but it could be an example showing that more is happening than people just waiting for their government to fix the problems. (Disclaimer: My personal view is that when politicians wouldn't have learned the expression "too big to fail", there wouldn't be banks being too big to fail. Also banks going bankrupt isn't fantastic, but throwing good money at them is much worse). I tend to disagree on the Goldman example, as politicians are always looking for the "right thing to do". Similar to "we should be using open source software", some of them probably will say "we should move our accounts to our local community bank", and corporations will follow to show they are "not evil". Its just one of those ideas that have huge potential of becoming policy. I think "Move your money" should be put in a separate paragraph called something like "Public response" with a few sentences. IMHO, it´s more important than the "Too big to fail is too big" paragraph. Joepnl (talk) 03:58, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Contradicting Opening
I think having our second paragraph directly contradict our first parapgrah is confusing, and must be a violation of some quality standard ("X is green. The previous statement is false, it's really blue."). I understand there is some controversy as to the meaning of the phrase. Personally, I believe it is meant to imply that total failure of a given system is impossible, so we need not worry about it. Sort of the same attitude given towards the HMS Titanic, indictive of overconfidence in a great design or in gerth always being able to withstand damage. I do not recall any examples of someone saying something was too big to fail, so we must keep it from failing. Regardless of the perceived connotation, I think there is room for both interpretation in this article, and a rewording is in order. -- Yookaloco (talk) 17:22, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Insufficiently sourced claim
the claim "For example the "too big to fail" policy has been explicitly refuted in the People's Republic of China.[4]" seems to be insufficiently sourced. The source for this claim does not link to any organ of the People's Republic of China; rather it links to the personal opinion of a certain Mr Chang making what appears to be a set of rhetorical flourishes on one website. It certainly isn't established that GITIC was considered a systematically important institution. In fact, the continued growth of China's economy through 2001 despite the failure of GITIC suggests that this isn't case of too big to fail at all. Most investors would be genuinely skeptical that the Chinese government would not try to bail out any of its truly large national banks, such as Bank of China, ICBC, the Agricultural Bank, and the Import Export Bank. I will be deleting this section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.156.93.100 (talk) 01:42, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Additional sources
The following links were removed from the article based on WP:EL.

Each seems to be interesting and useful, and likely worth incorporating into the article with citations instead.


 * http://www.fdic.gov/bank/historical/history/235_258.pdf
 * http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/research/workshops/27apr2004/27apr04_kaufman1.pdf
 * http://www.fdic.gov/deposit/deposits/international/bibliography/1999/toobig.pdf
 * http://www.docstoc.com/docs/5606575/Some-Comments-on-Too-Big-to-Fail---The-Hazards-of-Bank-Bailouts

Pnm (talk) 03:41, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

The phrase is widely understood by the ignorant to mean something completely different
The economically illiterate think it means:

So big that failure is IMPOSSIBLE.

ie, it's so big that it cannot fail, rather than that it cannot be ALLOWED to fail. Thus the term is taken to mean that government bailouts are totally unnecessary, rather than absolutely required by the wider economy, so disastrous is a collapse.

The page should reflect this, both meanings are suggested by the common phrasing. --LeedsKing (talk) 02:28, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

I want to second this! The main article should state at the outset that the phrase means "Too big to ALLOW to fail". 71.139.169.240 (talk) 19:35, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Source of the phrase?
What's the source of the phrase? Shouldn't that be in this article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.67.12.109 (talk) 22:03, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I thought so too. For an early mention, I found a text from 1912ː "Gold and State Banking" from Edward R. Pease (p. 11-2, see this digitalization) in contect of the Fabian Society. But I don't know if it is already used as a phrase in this text. Does anybody know? — Also see this google-n-gram-chart (books.google.com/ngrams/) for a history of the termː beginning in the early 20th century, having a little peak in the 1960ies and then from the 1970ies onwards contuinualy rising. Kommerz (talk) 14:52, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Supercapitalism
Originally at Fascism, I noticed a sentence about Supercapitalism (concept in Italian Fascism) that reminded me of too big to fail. From supercapitalism: I think it would be nice to incorporate this somehow. Jesanj (talk) 03:02, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

"Too big to fail is too big"
There's a quote in the section that doesn't really deliver any additional value, should it be removed?

I think this quote only expresses the POV of the invidual and lacks bringing in any support for the statement and is therefore irrelevant. 94.237.38.23 (talk) 20:39, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * It's a quote from the British chancellor which directly addresses the topic of the article. Keep it. bobrayner (talk) 02:07, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Attorney General Eric Holder can't prosecute
This story is about how Attorney General Eric Holder said that too-big-to-fail banks make it very difficult for him to prosecute their criminal wrongdoing: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-06/too-big-to-fail-banks-limit-prosecutor-options-holder-testifies.html - I think this should be added to the article.

Also, here is a list of several dozen economists, finance experts, and bankers who have gone on record saying banks should be broken up: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/03/top-economists-and-financial-experts-say-we-must-break-up-the-giant-banks/ - I don't know if it's reasonable to include the list or not, but it should certainly at least be cited prominently. EllenCT (talk) 05:21, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

See also: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324128504578344652647097278.html (if you can't read this, google the title and then click on the link from inside google.) It was in advance of one of its authors' CPAC speech. EllenCT (talk) 10:05, 13 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I have added these. EllenCT (talk) 05:37, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

I believe Holder's prosecution record and affiliations as described in should also be included. EllenCT (talk) 05:55, 12 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Reading the article, the information about Holder's financial ties seems to disrupt the coherence of the section (and its context in the article). It's interesting, possibly important information about AG Holder, but I'm not sure that it is relevant to the topic of "Too Big to Fail" and the resulting investigations. This appears to be the lone instance in which the credibility (or motives) of the involved figures is explored. korbnep &#171;talk&#187; 23:33, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Dates earlier than 2010
Terry Pratchett used the term essentially as understood in 2004's Going Postal. Anyone know if Bernenke's a Pratchett fan? Thmazing (talk) 00:29, 24 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Check this out. Thmazing (talk) 01:11, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 3 one external links on Too big to fail. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Attempted to fix sourcing for http://richmondfed.org/publications/economic_research/economic_quarterly/pdfs/spring2005/ennismalek.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20131104025319/http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-20/why-should-taxpayers-give-big-banks-83-billion-a-year-.html to http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-20/why-should-taxpayers-give-big-banks-83-billion-a-year-.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20131202072505/http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-01/how-to-know-when-we-ve-ended-the-83-billion-bank-subsidy.html to http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-01/how-to-know-when-we-ve-ended-the-83-billion-bank-subsidy.html

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Sentence written as an opinion
The last sentence of the section 3.3 (Moral hazard) doesn't cite a source and doesn't hace citation marks. I assume it was a personal opinion of the writer ("Thereby, although the financial institutions that were bailed out were indeed important to the financial system, the fact that they took risk beyond what they would otherwise, should be enough for the Government to let them face the consequences of their actions. It would have been a lesson to motivate institutions to proceed differently next time."). I think it has to be deleted Magnetizedlion27 (talk) 23:30, 15 April 2022 (UTC)