Fed’s Kashkari calls for break up of big banks, taxes to curb risk

Former Wall Streeter Neel Kashkari has found an unlikely admirer in Bernie Sanders.

Kashkari, the new president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve, blasted the big banks Tuesday in his first major speech, comparing them to a nuclear threat that could lead to another financial meltdown.

He called for a breakup of the largest US financial firms and said they should be regulated like “public utilities” to prevent their collapse.

“I believe the biggest banks are still too big to fail and continue to pose a significant, ongoing risk to our economy,” he said at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

The rant against Wall Street was surprising for a former Goldman Sachs banker who ran as a Republican nominee for California governor in 2014.

But the comments earned him praise from Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders, who has targeted Wall Street in his campaign.

“I am delighted that the new president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve believes that we need to break up too big to fail banks,” he said in a statement.

Kashkari, who oversaw the government’s $700 billion rescue of banks in 2008, said Congress needs to go beyond the Dodd-Frank financial reform to prevent another crisis.

“A very crude analogy is that of a nuclear reactor,” he said. “The cost to society of letting a reactor melt down is astronomical. Given that cost, governments will do whatever they can to stabilize the reactor before they lose control.”