BankThink

Sandy Weill's call to break up big banks invoked the Main Street bankers who have blasted Wall Street fat cats like him for years. What next for him - a director post at a small bank in Peoria?

Breaking News This Morning ... Sandy Weill Calls for Return of Glass-Steagall: No, you are not dreaming, and this is not a parody from The Onion. This is real. In a CNBC interview this morning, the architect of Citigroup says, "What we should probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking, have banks be deposit takers, have banks make commercial loans and real estate loans, have banks do something that's not going to...

You should be able to move your money as fast as you can make it. But the banking system today works about as speedily as the Post Office.

Receiving Wide Coverage ... Regulatory Reform Redux: The New Yorker's financial columnist, James Surowiecki, frames the Libor-rigging scandal as a textbook example of the financial industry's inability to regulate itself. Reputation risk has proven an insufficient incentive for bankers to behave, he writes; an "intrusive and overbearing" approach is "exactly what the financial industry needs." But Reuters' blogger Felix Salmon finds Surowiecki's new-sheriff-in-town prescriptions (jail time for fraudsters and preventive measures inspired by urban policing strategies)...

Recessions do not cause bank failures. It is banks causing booms that cause recessions that cause banks to fail.