Too big to fail

"Too big to fail" is a descriptor assigned to banks or other large corporations[1] which have such a wide and deep investment in the international stock market that, were any of these institutions to go under, a chain reaction would result that would undermine and potentially atomize the world economy. A more truthful phrase would be "too big to be allowed to fail".

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The term originates from Congressional hearings in the 1980's related to the Savings and Loan scandal, but became popular as a kind of meme when Andrew Ross Sorkin used the phrase as a title of his non-fiction accounting of the 2008 crash and the TARP legislation program the American Treasury executed to prevent a cataclysm.

Derivatives

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See also

References

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