Wall Street Flip Flop On Big Banks
BALDWIN: Here is some good news if you are looking to buy a home. Mortgage rates are now at record lows. Take a look at this, 3.49 percent. That is the average for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage. And the average for a 15-year is down to 2.8 percent. A sign today that the big, make that mega-banks are losing friends. A guy who credited -- who really is credited with supersizing the banks, is now in the first place now calling for breaking them up. CNN business correspondent Christine Roman reports this flip-flop is coming from the former CEO of, drum roll, Citigroup.</s>CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Brooke, the godfather of big, huge banks now says maybe they are too big. It's the ultimate Wall Street flip-flop. Sandy Weill, former chairman of Citigroup, spent years and millions of lobbying dollars pushing Congress to let banks get bigger. Congress and President Clinton agreed and they tore down Depression-era banking protections. Critics say deposit-taking banks were then allowed to make risky bets and chase trading profits and that led to the financial</s>SANFORD "SANDY" WEILL, FORMER CEO, CITIGROUP: I think what we should probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking and have banks do something that's not going to risk the taxpayer dollars, that's not going to be too big to fail.</s>ROMANS: Not only are they too big to fail, some say they're too big to make money for their shareholders. Banking stocks are down nearly 60 percent over the past five years, compared to the S&P; 500, which is down about 9 percent over the same period. Former Morgan Stanley Chairman and CEO Phil Purcell wrote an op-ed published in "The Wall Street Journal" last month saying, quote, "there is one benefit of breakups that hasn't gotten much publicity. Shareholders would get greater value from their investments. Breaking these companies into separate businesses would double to triple the shareholder value of each institution." Maybe if public outcry doesn't slim down the banks, shareholder outcry will. Brooke.</s>BALDWIN: Christine Romans. Thanks, Christine. And, oh, my goodness, the Jackson family feud is -- it's just outrageous. Matriarch and guardian Katherine Jackson travels nine hours by car to go home where someone has told the cook, the nanny, the housekeepers to go. I'm about to speak with someone who knows this family very, very well.