“Too big to fail” should mean “too big to exist.”

Remember all the ancient history from high school about antitrust laws? Did any of you remember these history lessons when Paulson said that some companies are just "too big to fail"? Probably not, since the business-owned "culture" in the US assists us in forgetting this history and subsequently condemns us to repeat it.

So for the record: When they are too big to fail, enforce already existing antitrust legislation to break 'em into manageable, not-too-big-to-fail pieces.

clipped from www.counterpunch.org The country is being dragged down by monstrous businesses, all of which, we’re told, are just “too big to fail.”  As a consequence of this, the nation’s taxpayers, and their progeny born and yet unborn, are having trillions of dollars sucked away to prop up these giant rotting corporate corpses. Zombie banks, zombie automakers, zombie insurance companies, all bigger than nation states, and all on life-support. There is a simple answer to this problem. Bust them up.

Follow-up: Last night on MSNBC, Jim Cramer specifically mentioned the size and complexity of these banks as reason #1 for why they should not be de jure) nationalized. (I say de jure since the banks have already been de facto nationalized, seeing as how they are running purely on taxpayer money.) To my way of thinking, that is precisely why they need to be smashed into dozens of smaller banks.