Banks Still Too Big to Fail

A common mantra during the financial crisis was that certain banks had grown "too big to fail" and threatened the entire system were they to collapse. One year later, some of these very same institutions have expanded even further, leaving in place the potential for another meltdown should things go awry. J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank of America, for example, each now holds more than $1 out of every $10 in deposits in the entire country, the Washington Post reports. Treasury officials say that encouraging competition and penalizing banks for being too large are top priorities in a new regulatory reform plan yet to be approved by Congress. "It is at the top of the list of things that need to be fixed," Sheila C. Bair, chairman of the FDIC said. "It fed the crisis, and it has gotten worse because of the crisis."