“Too big to fail” – the 26-year-old origin and some more recent uses

ORIGINAL QUOTE FROM 1984: “We have a new kind of bank. It is called too big to fail. TBTF, and it is a wonderful bank.”        U.S. Congressman Stewart B. McKinney (R-Connecticut)        Remark on September 19, 1984        Commenting on the federal government’s $4.5 billion bailout of Continental Illinois  bank, which faced insolvency due to unwise lending practices. His phrase was resurrected during the more recent bank bailout. For more background, see the book Too Big to Fail.

ADAM SMITH STYLE COUNTERQUOTE: “The whole notion of ‘too big to fail’ is about as anti-capitalist as it gets. When you start  protecting companies that should go under through their own faults, you are removing ‘the invisible hand.’”        Matt Tellam        Columnist for the Oregon Daily Emerald        In his April 28, 2010 column

BERNIE SAUNDERS QUOTE: “Not only are too big to fail financial institutions bad for taxpayers, the enormous concentration  of ownership in the financial sector has led to higher bank fees, usurious interest rates on credit cards, and fewer choices for consumers.”        U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont)         Press release, April 26, 2010

DEAD DINOSAUR QUOTE: “Chill, dudes. We’re too big to fail.”        Political cartoon by Mike Keefe         In the Denver Post, Nov. 12, 2008

DEPLORABLY LATE QUOTE: “If they’re too big to fail, they’re too big. In 1911 we broke up Standard  Oil – so what happened? The individual parts became more valuable than the whole. Maybe that’s what we need to do.”        Alan Greenspan        Former Federal Reserve Chairman        Comment to the Council on Foreign Relations, October 2009. (Expressing a view he didn’t seem have mentioned when he was Federal Reserve Chairman.)

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For more economic quotations see… The Elgar Dictionary of Economic Quotations Compiled by Charles Robert McCann Jr.