Simon Johnson — Citigroup Will Be Broken Up

Simon Johnson quotes Elizabeth Warren:

“A century ago, Teddy Roosevelt was America’s trustbuster. He went after the giant trusts and monopolies in this country, and a lot of people talk about how those trusts deserved to be broken up because they had too much economic power. But Teddy Roosevelt said we should break them up because they had too much political power. Teddy Roosevelt said break them up because all that concentrated power threatened the very foundations of our democratic system.”

Citigroup is not the only TBTF that needs to be whittled down to size to rebalance political power in the US. Chase, Goldman, etc. also have to be addressed in the same breath.

Then there is the military-industrial complex and other trusts like energy and pharma. The clandestine agencies that have operational arms and agendas in addition to intelligence-gathering arms also need to be addressed. 

All of these have political power that constitutes a shadow government that drives oligarchic "democracy" in which voters are presented with a pre-selected slate of nominees chosen by the oligarchy based on the ability to raise funds from them as the chief donors. Then the public is supposed to believe that the recipients of this largesse are not influenced by it, especially when they need it for their next election and most of lawmakers time between elections is devoted to fundraising.

Baseline Scenario 

Citigroup Will Be Broken Up
Simon Johnson