What Would Breaking Up the Banks Even Look Like?

A too-big-to-fail, too-complex-to-manage bank such as JPMorgan Chase should be split into three parts. The investment bank could be spun off entirely. JPMorgan’s creative investment bankers would relish the chance to turn the franchise into a partnership, with the freedom to pay themselves what they please. The remaining bank would be split into a wholesale bank, for large corporate clients, and a retail bank, the only taker of insured deposits.

.. The investment bank would be regulated as lightly as a hedge fund, but would not have access to financing that uses taxpayer money. The wholesale bank would provide only simple banking products, including foreign exchange and interest-rate hedges. The retail bank would be limited to consumer banking and small-business and mortgage lending, with no scope for high leverage or the big-scale securitization that sank otherwise simple banks, such as Washington Mutual, in the crisis.

.. Just as important as a structural change is the need to eliminate the culture of bonuses at consumer-facing banks.

.. The bonus pool would skim off 40 to 50 percent of revenues up-front while any losses hit only shareholders and taxpayers.

.. In my view, when banks have access to central-bank funding there should be a legal limit to what they can pay their employees ($500,000 a year wouldn’t be unreasonable).

.. In my view, when banks have access to central-bank funding there should be a legal limit to what they can pay their employees ($500,000 a year wouldn’t be unreasonable).

Buchanon: Trump Can Beat Clinton in November

This is the year of the outsider, and Hillary is the prom queen of Goldman Sachs. She represents continuity. Trump represents change.

.. If we believe the immigration issue Trump has seized upon is explosive here, look to Europe. In the Balkans and Central Europe, even in Austria, the barriers are going up and the border guards appearing.

Fed’s Neel Kashkari Says Banks Are ‘Still Too Big to Fail’

Mr. Kashkari’s remarks caused a stir in Washington. Such views have become relatively common at both ends of the political spectrum — providing fuel for the presidential campaigns of Senator Bernie Sanders, Democrat of Vermont, and Donald Trump, a Republican — but Mr. Kashkari is a moderate Republican and a former employee of Goldman Sachs.

.. Mr. Kashkari said the cost of large crises underscored the importance of minimizing risk. “It’s not simply the cost of the bailout,” he said. “It’s the economic damage that’s inflicted across society.”

.. Alternatively, the government could limit risk-taking by increasing the share of funding banks must raise in the form of capital rather than borrowed money. Mr. Kashkari compared this to the safeguards imposed on nuclear power plants, where failure is regarded as unacceptable. Anat R. Admati, a Stanford finance professor, is a leading proponent of this approach.