'Exactly What I Was Worried About': Warren Warns New Big Bank Merger Will Increase Risk of Another Crash

In response to news that SunTrust and BB&T are attempting to merge in a deal that would create the sixth largest bank in the United States, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) declared that this is precisely the kind of financial sector consolidation she was warning about last year as congressional Democrats and Republicans teamed up to ram through a major bank deregulation bill.

“Two of the country’s biggest banks—SunTrust and BB&T—are merging to form one of the biggest banks in the country. That’s exactly what I was worried about a year ago after Congress passed its big bank deregulation bill,” wrote the Massachusetts senator and likely 2020 presidential candidate, referring to the legislation that critics took to calling the “Bank Lobbyist Act.”

As Common Dreams reported, 17 Senate Democrats and 33 House Democrats voted for the legislation, which President Donald Trump signed into law last year.

Warren went on to express concern that the merger—which, if approved, would be the largest since the 2008 financial crisis—could set the stage for another economic meltdown.

“Gigantic banks wrecked our economy, but the Fed told me they are rubber-stamping nearly every proposed bank merger,” Warren wrote on Friday. “SunTrust and BB&T are probably next. We can’t let banks become too big to fail again: American families will suffer.”

As journalist David Dayen reported for The Intercept on Friday, SunTrust and BB&T’s proposed merger is a direct consequence of the bipartisan deregulatory bill—a fact that undermines repeated claims by Democrats and Republicans alike that the measure was designed to provide relief to small community banks.