Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and David Vitter (R-La.) said that big banks’ disproportionate reliance on U.S. aid after the credit crisis reinforces the need for additional steps to ensure the end of too big to fail, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Brown and Vitter, co-sponsors of a plan to impose a 15 percent capital requirement on the biggest lenders, commented after the release yesterday of a Government Accountability Office study that showed such firms made greater use of bailout programs introduced after markets collapsed in 2008. The GAO findings represent the first of two reports responding to a request by Brown and Vitter to put a dollar figure on the benefit derived from U.S. aid by the largest bank holding companies. The number sought by the lawmakers, who say that the big banks have grown by $2 trillion since the crisis, will be included in a second report next year, the GAO said. Larger bank holding companies, which rely on short-term funding markets, made greater use of aid programs during the crisis than did smaller banks mainly funded by deposits, the GAO said. Aid use measured as the percentage of total assets supported by programs was higher for banks with more than $50 billion in assets, according to the report.
