If we decide to break up the big banks, can we actually do it?
The first and most obvious proof that we can lies in the 2010 bank-regulation law, the Dodd-Frank Act, which requires America’s too-big-to-fail banks to submit plans — so-called living wills — outlining how they can be dismantled if they get into trouble. So these banks have already provided breakup blueprints.
All that is required is to remove the conditionality and change the timing: Break them up now, not when and if. And what could be easier than doing so according to their own instructions, and so, once and for all, eliminate the systemic risk posed by the biggest and riskiest banks?