The end of ‘too big to fail’ remains difficult to picture

Published in the Financial Times.

If you buy shares of stock for $100 and they fall to $30, we say, “Oh well, that’s the stock market.” If you buy a bond for $100 and it ends up paying 20 cents on the dollar, we say, “Oh well, that’s the bond market.”

But if your deposits in big banks are going to pay 97 cents instead of par, that is a financial crisis, and the government must intervene to protect you.

That is why Simon Samuels is so right that “we are a long way from ending ‘too big to fail’” (“The ECB should resist the lure of bigger banks,” Jan. 31). As long as we insist that no one can lose money on bank deposits, too big to fail can never end and never will.