| List of Figures | p. x |
| Preface | p. xi |
| List of Abbreviations | p. xv |
| The Too Big to Fail Doctrine | p. 1 |
| The meaning and origin of TBTF | p. 1 |
| Rewarding recklessness: An anecdote | p. 9 |
| TBTF: A privilege of banks and other financial institutions | p. 10 |
| The pros and cons of financial regulation | p. 14 |
| TBTF as an extension of the banking safety net | p. 17 |
| The History of TBTF | p. 19 |
| Financial crises and regulation | p. 19 |
| The history of deregulation | p. 22 |
| Evolution of the TBTF doctrine | p. 26 |
| TBTF rescue during the global financial crisis | p. 28 |
| Has the TBTF problem become worse? | p. 32 |
| Some Notorious TBTF Cases | p. 33 |
| Continental Illinois | p. 33 |
| Long-Term Capital Management | p. 35 |
| The Royal Bank of Scotland | p. 40 |
| Northern Rock | p. 43 |
| American International Group | p. 44 |
| Citigroup | p. 47 |
| Lehman, Merrill and Bear | p. 50 |
| Far Too Big and Politically Connected | p. 54 |
| No longer humble intermediaries | p. 54 |
| Internalization and "King of the Mountain" | p. 55 |
| The quest for market power | p. 57 |
| Exploiting the economies of scale and scope | p. 63 |
| A reality check | p. 68 |
| The big motive: Mission TBTF | p. 69 |
| Growing big: A recap and evidence | p. 71 |
| The growing political influence of financial institutions | p. 75 |
| Victims or villains? | p. 76 |
| The Jewel in the Crown | p. 81 |
| Some facts and figures | p. 81 |
| Financial markets and financial engineering | p. 86 |
| The government's love affair with the financial sector | p. 93 |
| The role of deregulation | p. 95 |
| The role of academia | p. 97 |
| Worthy of Bailout: To be or Not to be? | p. 109 |
| Cherry picking? | p. 109 |
| Size as a determinant of systemic importance | p. 111 |
| Contagion as a determinant of systemic importance | p. 114 |
| Correlation as a determinant of systemic importance | p. 116 |
| Concentration as a determinant of systemic importance | p. 118 |
| Conditions/context as a determinant of systemic importance | p. 118 |
| A classification scheme | p. 120 |
| So, does size matter? | p. 121 |
| Why Too Big to Fail is Too Outrageous to Accept | p. 124 |
| Any argument for TBTF? | p. 124 |
| Argument 1: The difficulty of determining TBTF institutions | p. 126 |
| Argument 2: Diversion of resources away from more beneficial uses | p. 126 |
| Argument 3: Boosting rent-seeking unproductive activities | p. 128 |
| Argument 4: TBTF creates significant moral hazard | p. 130 |
| Argument 5: Financial burden on future generations or hyperinflation | p. 132 |
| Argument 6: Saving a minority at the expense of the majority | p. 132 |
| Argument 7: Rewarding recklessness and hampering market discipline | p. 133 |
| Argument 8: TBTF as a source of poor performance | p. 135 |
| Argument 9: TBTF creates distortions | p. 136 |
| Argument 10: TBTF makes big institutions even bigger | p. 137 |
| Argument 11: Boosting the financial sector even further | p. 137 |
| Arguments against for all tastes | p. 138 |
| Dealing with the Menace of TBTF | p. 139 |
| Why TBTF should be tossed in the dustbin | p. 139 |
| The million dollar question | p. 140 |
| Fighting the obesity of financial institutions | p. 142 |
| Appropriate and effective regulation | p. 150 |
| Allowing failing financial institutions to fail | p. 161 |
| Forget about Basel II | p. 171 |
| Basel II in the aftermath of the global financial crisis | p. 171 |
| The Basel Accords | p. 172 |
| Basel II as a form of capital-based regulation | p. 174 |
| Basel II: The wrong kind of regulation | p. 174 |
| The treatment of liquidity and leverage | p. 176 |
| The use of internal models | p. 180 |
| Risk sensitivity and procyclicality | p. 185 |
| Reliance on rating agencies | p. 188 |
| The implementation problems | p. 189 |
| The exclusionary and discriminatory aspects of Basel II | p. 190 |
| The one-size-fits-all problem | p. 192 |
| Basel II as a pure compliance exercise | p. 192 |
| Concluding remarks | p. 193 |
| TBTF: Where Do We Stand? | p. 195 |
| The costs and benefits of TBTF | p. 195 |
| Circumventing the TBTF problem: Why and how? | p. 196 |
| Regulation: The way forward | p. 197 |
| No more business as usual | p. 198 |
| Basic finance without TBTF | p. 199 |
| References | p. 201 |
| Also | p. 216 |
| Index | p. 217 |
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