“Too big to fail” began as the description of a problem. In 2008, federal regulators realized that it was simply too risky to allow the country’s largest banks to go under, as the secondary effects on other financial institutions would result in a chain reaction that would crash the entire American economy into a deflationary depression.
Since then, “too big to fail” has become a slur, a backlash directed at large financial institutions who are seen as responsible for the economic downturn and deserving of the harshest populist political punishment. Reformers have demanded ways to break up those large institutions and force them to become smaller and (thi