Sandy Weill: Break Up the Banks
Dr. Frankenstein has some regrets, it seems.
Sandy Weill, the visionary former CEO of Citigroup who built the largest banking firm back in the 1990s, thinks that today's investment and retail banks are too big and should be broken up.
In an incredible interview on CNBC this morning, the soft-spoken Weill said, "I'm suggesting that they be broken up so that the taxpayer will never be at risk, the depositors won't be at risk, the leverage of the banks will be something reasonable."
In the video below, fast forward to the 5:00 mark for this gem:
I want to see us to be a leader and what we are doing now is not helping.The world changes and the world we live in is different than the world we lived in 10 years ago. And I think one has to think about what this world is about. There are a lot of things in Silicon Valley that do not work […] But there is no other place in the world where you see the creativity that you see in the United States today. And I'd like to see that back in the financial business and I don't see that happening.
Later on, as the incredulous CNBC anchors try to make sense of what they are hearing, the retired Weill drops this truth bomb:
I think too big to fail can be handled.
Whether this changes anything, President Obama has a new talking point on the campaign trail.
Phil Albinus is the former editor-in-chief of Advanced Trading. He has nearly two decades of journalism experience and has been covering financial technology and regulation for nine years. Before joining Advanced Trading, he served as editor of Waters, a monthly trade journal ... View Full Bio
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