"A decade late and billions short"

Over at the Guardian, I take note of a remarkable mea culpa:

It was a startling admission from one of the architects of the modern financial system. John Reed, who with Sandy Weill created Citigroup, said the merger was a mistake. What's more, Reed went on to say that the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which was needed to make the merger legal, was also a mistake.

It's time to question the idea that bigger is better when it comes to banking:

Instead of wondering which institutions might be too big to fail, it's time to consider whether the financial behemoths are too big to succeed. Sandy Weill spent his career trying to build the world's biggest bank, only to see it destroy billions in shareholder wealth and require federal bailout funds to keep it alive. John Reed's admission that the grandiose dreams of the bankers have turned out to be nightmares should bring pause to those who still argue that bigger is better.

Unfortunately, as I write, "Reed's mea culpa came a decade late and left the world's financial system a few hundred billion dollars short."
Update: Common Dreams picked up the piece.