DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Bernie Sanders offered limited details on how he would break up big financial institutions during a recent interview with the New York Daily News.
In an interview with the newspaper’s editorial board, published Monday, the Vermont senator was pressed on how he would carry out his campaign pledge. Sanders said some banks are too big and could be broken up either by “having legislation passed, or giving the authority to the secretary of treasury to determine, under Dodd-Frank, that these banks are a danger to the economy over the problem of too-big-to-fail.”
But Sanders did not elaborate on exactly how this would work. When asked how breaking up banks would affect jobs and assets at large financial institutions like J.P. Morgan Chase or Citibank, Sanders said it “is their decision as to what they want to do and how they want to reconfigure themselves. That’s not my decision.”
In the wide-ranging interview, Sanders was asked about a wrongful death lawsuit against a rifle maker over the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. Sanders said gun dealers should not be sued for selling a “legal product” that was misused. But he did say people should be able to sue dealers and manufacturers who sell when they know “guns are going to the hands of wrong people.”
Sanders also said he didn’t know if President Obama’s drone policy was the right one. And he “hadn’t thought a whole lot” about where he would imprison a captured Islamic State commander.