What does it mean for an entity to be “too big to fail”? According to Cornell University, “too big to fail” refers to an “entity so important to a financial system that a government would not allow it to go bankrupt due to the seriousness of the economic repercussions.” The ProPublica Bailout Tracker, last updated in August 2022, states that that there have been 991 bailout recipients with a total disbursement of $635 billion! That does not include recent bailouts such as Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. In fact, Signature Bank’s failure was the 3rd largest in U.S. history based on its $110 billion in assets at the end of 2022. $110 billion may seem like a colossal amount of money, but it pales in comparison to the total assets of America’s biggest banks. Wyoming LLC & Trust Attorney has created this intriguing chart of the 30 largest banks in the United States based on total assets. Take a look:
This graphic does a fantastic job of visualizing just how massive the biggest U.S. banks truly are. Chase Bank, or the commercial banking arm of JPMorgan, has nearly a trillion more in assets than its closest contender! Chase Bank has $3.2 trillion in total assets compared to 2nd place Bank of America, which has $2.4 trillion in assets. That is an unbelievable amount of money; India’s GDP is $3.469 trillion, so Chase Bank has nearly as much in assets as the 3rd most populous country in the world! Could Chase Bank fail? It is impossible to predict, but Chase Bank experienced an influx of new clients following the recent bank collapses, so the financial behemoth only seems to be growing stronger.
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