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Working Paper

Origins of Too-Big-to-Fail Policy

This paper traces the origin of the too-big-to-fail problem in banking to the bailout of the $1.2 billion Bank of the Commonwealth in 1972. It describes this bailout and those of subsequent banks through that of Continental Illinois in 1984. Motivations behind the bailouts are described with a particular emphasis on those provided by Irvine Sprague in his book Bailout. During this period, market concentration due to interstate banking restrictions is a factor in most of the bailouts, and systemic risk concerns were raised to justify the bailouts of surprisingly small banks. Sprague’s descriptions are also used to describe the tradeoffs and the time-consistency problem faced by bank regulators. Finally, most of the bailouts in this period relied on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s use of the Essentiality Doctrine. A discussion of this doctrine is provided and used to illustrate how legal constraints on regulators may become less constraining over time.

Working Papers of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland are preliminary materials circulated to stimulate discussion and critical comment on research in progress. They may not have been subject to the formal editorial review accorded official Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland publications. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland or the Federal Reserve System.


Suggested Citation

Nurisso, George C., and Edward S. Prescott. 2017. “Origins of Too-Big-to-Fail Policy.” Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper No. 17-10. https://doi.org/10.26509/frbc-wp-201710