Open thread for night owls: Make banks small enough to fail

At the Campaign for America's Future, Richard (RJ) Eskow has posted a good piece'Break Up The Big Banks Now. Here's How:

JPMorgan Chase is either our largest or second-largest bank, depending on when and how you ask the question. News stories often point out that it has $2 trillion in asset, which sounds impressive. But they usually fail to mention that it has liabilities of more than $2 trillion, too, leaving it roughly $183 billion in the black.

That ain't bad - but it's not much more net worth than you'll see sitting around the table when Mitt Romney's Super PAC friends get together for lunch.

And we can't trust those numbers. We now know that these risky London deals weren't accurately conveyed in last year's annual report. What else don't we know about JPM's liabilities?

All of our big banks were on the hook for hundreds of trillions of dollars in the run-up to the financial crisis of 2008. And now they're bigger than ever. How big? We don't know for sure - and that's a big part of the problem.

Our four largest banks have 95 percent of the total exposure to derivatives. Two years ago we analyzed the raw data and found that JPM alone held 44 percent of that risk - and JPM has grown since then.

Because they intend to keep right on growing. As Jamie Dimon promised shareholders, 'I want to assure you that your company will be bigger and stronger and better a year from today.'

If that doesn't frighten you, you haven't been paying attention.

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