Three Cheers For Bernie And Paul

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Pennsylvania Rep. Paul Kanjorski will say and do what needs to be done on Too Big To Fail: break the banks.

An independent U.S. senator on Friday introduced a bill that would give the government the power to identify and break up financial firms that are "too big to fail," an idea that is catching on.

"If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist," said Senator Bernie Sanders in a statement.

"We should break them up so they are no longer in a position to bring down the entire economy," he said.

Sanders is an independent outside the U.S. political mainstream. But he is not the only one looking at break-ups.

Representative Paul Kanjorski, the Democratic chairman of the capital markets subcommittee in the U.S. House of Representatives, is working on a break-up power amendment.

It would give a new government systemic risk council break-up power, with clearance from the president.

"It's the natural action of capital to grow and exceed. Now we're going to contain it," Kanjorski told CNBC television.

He said large banks oppose his amendment because it would threaten them. But, he said, mid-sized and smaller financial institutions would be helped by it because they would be better able to compete if mega-firms were downsized.

"When the people's money is being used to bail out these large companies ... We certainly have to have someone to tell them what to do in order to save them," he said.

The idea seems exceedingly simple, so much so that you have to wonder why it hasn't been proposed. We have already proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that any bank that represents a global systemic risk is too large to function safely. Rescuing these banks cost trillions of dollars and will continue to cost trillions. It has all but wrecked the dollar and with it our economy. The only way to assure this never happens again is to break the big banks, period.

And of course this legislation will never, ever get near a vote. It will never get out of committee. Our Congress is too corrupt, regardless of party affiliation.

We'll see.