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
- Too Big to Jail - a popular phrase at Occupy Wall Street
- Too Big to Put on Trial - Senator Elizabeth Warren, of the Senate Banking Committee, at a hearing in 2013[2]
See also
References
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20190603142758/https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/too-big-to-fail.asp "Too Big to Fail," Investopedia. Updated April 30, 2019. Accessed July 17, 2019.]
- Senator Elizabeth Warren's First Banking Committee Hearing
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