Today's Outrage: Preplanning Bank Burials

Today's Outrage is published weekdays at 9:30 a.m. EDT and is available as an RSS feed.

The Obama Administration wants the biggest of the big banks to start planning their own funerals.

Any bank such as Citigroup (C - commentary - Trade Now), Goldman Sachs (GS - commentary - Trade Now) and Bank of America (BAC - commentary - Trade Now) that is considered too big to fail because of its size, leverage or the degree that its operations are interwoven into the fabric of the entire financial system would need to draft detailed plans for unwinding their operations should it ever come to that.

An analysis of the administration's proposed regulatory overhaul by the Associated Press concludes that the new scrutiny, larger cash cushions and asset requirements that the administration desires are intended to limit the number of systemically risky financial institutions by making it unappealing to get that big.

Essentially, the proposed requirements would pressure the financial system to deconsolidate -- a classic knee-jerk reaction to the financial bailout intended to make it less likely to be repeated.

Much like the bailout itself, these hastily concocted hangover cures may have many unintended side effects. The cure may eventually make us all feel worse than the sickness ever did.

It reminds me of the environment of corporate misdeeds that prompted the onerous Sarbanes-Oxley rules. What a mess that turned out to be -- even former Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D., Md.) and former U.S. Rep. Michael Oxley (R., Ohio) later told me that they regretted the extent of the regulatory changes they championed.

So here we go again. This time, everyone should all read the fine print and fully understand what they are signing, in particular the consequences.

---

Glenn Hall is the editor of TheStreet.com. Previously, he served as deputy editor and chief innovation officer at The Orange County Register and as a news manager at Bloomberg News in Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Washington, D.C. As a reporter, he covered business and financial markets, worked in both print and television in the U.S. and Europe, and conducted in-depth investigative coverage at The Journal-Gazette in Fort Wayne, Ind. His work also has been published in a variety of newspapers including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and International Herald Tribune. Hall received a bachelor's degree in journalism and political science from The Ohio State University and a certificate in project and program management from Boston University.