Many on the Left want to rein in big banks with regulation. Many on the Right have the same goal. As usual, there’s some common ground where Left and Right could begin: end subsidies to big banks.
Mark Calabria at Cato has one proposal that goes in this direction: limit banks’ access to the FDIC. Calabria proposes a couple of changes to federal deposit insurance, including a limit to how much in deposits any one bank can have insured. That doesn’t prevent a bank from getting really big, it just limits how much size the taxpayer has to backstop.
Calabria in the same post argues against breaking up the big banks (a position I have supported), but his FDIC have a similar effect.
And, yes, this proposal does have cross-ideological appeal – liberal Matt Yglesias at Slate endorses it, writing That ought to create a financial disincentive toward becoming very large, and especially make it difficult to combine extremely large size with large-scale risk-taking.
