Too-Big-To-Fail Banks Have Raked In $102 Billion In Subsidies Since 2009: Report

[limpyhobbler]

America's biggest banks want you to believe that they get no special advantage, no subsidies, from being too big to fail. And yet people keep finding evidence of those subsidies.

The latest is World Bank economist Deniz Anginer, in a study for Bloomberg Markets magazine. Anginer estimates that the six biggest U.S. banks have saved $82 billion in borrowing costs since 2009 because investors believe the government will never let them fail and thus don't charge as much to lend them money as they do smaller banks. The report will be published in the June issue of the magazine.

Together with dirt-cheap government borrowing programs, Bloomberg estimates these banks -- JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley -- have saved $102 billion since 2009 because of their size advantage.

This estimate is actually a little smaller than the $83 billion-per-year subsidy that Bloomberg View, Bloomberg's op-ed arm, touted earlier this year. In fact, several studies have come up with different numbers for the subsidy, evidence of just how tricky it is to measure.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/10/too-big-to-fail-subsidies_n_3252879.html