Former Citigroup CEO Weill: Break up the banks

What this doesn't mention is that Weill engineered the merger of Citibank and Travelers, forming Citigroup, before the law was changed. He and others were working on getting it changed, but the law was still in effect at the time of the merger, so the merger was illegal.

http://marketday.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/07/25/12947271-former-citigroup-ceo-weill-break-up-the-banks?lite

By Roland Jones, NBC News 7/25/2012

Sandy Weill, the former Citigroup chairman and CEO credited with building the bank into a financial superpower, now says big banks should be split up.

In a wide-ranging CNBC interview, Weill suggested investment banks should be split from banks that provide retail and commercial banking services.

That’s an unusual outlook from Weill, who pushed the government to overturn the Glass-Steagall law that requires deposit-taking institutions to separate from risky investment banks.

The law was put in place after the 1929 stock market crash.

Citigroup became one of the nation’s problems during the financial crisis -- a poster-child for “too big to fail” with the government spending $45 billion trying to keep it afloat.

“Have banks do something that’s not going to risk the taxpayer dollars, that’s not going to be too big to fail,” Weill told CNBC.