Regulators Warn 5 Top Banks They Are Still Too Big to Fail

A JPMorgan Chase bank branch in Manhattan. Credit Karsten Moran for The New York Times

The nation’s top bank regulators have added an unexpected voice to the growing chorus of critics worried that the biggest American banks, nearly eight years after the financial crisis, are still too big to fail.

The Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said on Wednesday that five of the nation’s eight largest banks — including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America — did not have “credible” plans for how they would wind themselves down in a crisis without sowing panic.

That suggests that if there were another crisis today, the government would need to prop up the largest banks if it wanted to avoid financial chaos.

The announcement coincides with a presidential campaign that at times has been dominated by a debate over what danger the big banks still pose to the nation’s economic security. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has called for the biggest banks to be broken up, a stand that his opponent, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton, has criticized.

But Mr. Sanders’ position has drawn sympathy from some on the other side of the political spectrum, including the new president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Neel Kashkari, who was a Treasury official during the financial crisis.

In long letters sent to the banks this week, the two regulatory agencies pointed to the dangers created by the global reach and complexity of the largest banks, which are bigger now than they were before the 2008 crisis.

The current arrangement could “pose serious adverse effects to the financial stability of the United States,” the regulators said in their letter to JPMorgan.

By NATHANIEL POPPER and PETER EAVISAPRIL 13, 2016