Too big to fail

"Too big to fail" is a descriptor assigned to banks or other large corporations which have such a wide and deep investment in the international stock market that, were any of these institutions to go under, a chain reaction would result that would undermine and potentially atomize the world economy. A more truthful phrase would be "too big to be allowed to fail".

The term originates from Congressional hearings in the 1980's related to the Savings and Loan scandal, but became popular as a kind of meme when Andrew Ross Sorkin used the phrase as a title of his non-fiction accounting of the 2008 crash and the TARP legislation program the American Treasury executed to prevent a cataclysm.

Derivatives

 * Too Big to Jail - a popular phrase at Occupy Wall Street
 * Too Big to Put on Trial - Senator Elizabeth Warren, of the Senate Banking Committee, at a hearing in 2013