To most Americans the answer is clear: if a financial institution is too big to fail, it's just too big.

From Andrew Jackson to Williams Jennings Bryant to Teddy Roosevelt and FDR, the battle over size and power of banks and other financial institutions has been a theme that has run throughout American history. The reason is simple. The larger a financial institution becomes, the greater its power to control the lives and futures of ordinary Americans. Of course, that power is never demonstrated so graphically as in times of financial collapse, when the excesses of unregulated markets and supersized financial empires implode on the entire economy.