Another weapon in the Too Big to Fail battle?

Eugene White of Rutgers thinks that the shareholders of banks, big or small banks, should be penalized if the bank fails or is on the verge of failing. He seems to think that the possibility of paying out a sum of money by shareholders will cause them to be more sensitive to risk and will result in the bank not taking wild chances.  I'm not so sure. White relies on a study of bank experience from 1864 to 1913 which seems to show that such a shareholder liability program did reduce bank failures.  

I hate to say it but we are living in different times.  The whole idea of share ownership is very different. In the 19th and early 20th century there was much less trading of shares, people tended to invest for the longer haul.  The shareholder then had a lot more control over a company than the 21st century shareholder. Liability then was expressed in the par value of the stock, which value is meaningless today. So how would we define liability in dollars and cents? 

White's idea is not a bad one but it needs to be matched with regulatory means of limiting risk.