Cap On Big Bank Size Defeated

Statement from Mary Bottari, Director of the Real Economy Project for the Center for Media and Democracy:

“Today Wall Street won and the American people lost. Jamie Dimon is popping the champaigne corks. He met with the White House on Monday night and his team has been lobbying the Senate hard, arguing that any size cap on behemoth banks would make him uncompetitive. But a size cap is the single best way to prevent the growth of ‘too big to fail’ firms that threaten to collapse the global economy. And it is the single best way to protect taxpayers from future bailouts,” said Bottari. JP Morgan Chase spent $6,170,000 lobbying against financial reform in 2009 according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The common sense amendment offered by Sens. Brown and Kaufman would have capped the nondeposit liabilities of the largest banks at 2% of GDP. It is the only hard size cap proposed for the legislation, without it financial institutions can grow to be any size.

According to news reports, Dimon met with President Obama at the White House on Monday night. Obama was soliciting the views of the Business Council's executive committee about the economy and financial regulation. Dimon was a frequent visitor to the White House and his name was floated as a possible replacement to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. Dimon was a virulent advocate of allowing banks to grow to any size and wrote an oped on the topic for the Washington Post in November 2009.