Story highlights Sanders pledged to draft a list of firms whose failure would put the U.S. economy at risk in his first 100 days in office

Sanders repeatedly cast rival Hillary Clinton as too close to moneyed interests to seriously take on the banks

Washington (CNN) Bernie Sanders Tuesday vowed to break up America's biggest financial firms during his first year in office, as he laid out his vision for Wall Street reform in a New York City speech.

He pledged to draft a list of firms whose failure would put the U.S. economy at risk in his first 100 days in office and require those firms to reorganize within a year, saying that "if a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist."

The Vermont senator and Democratic presidential contender repeatedly cast rival Hillary Clinton as too close to moneyed interests to seriously take on the banks that have faced $204 billion in fines since 2009.

It was an in-your-face approach -- with Sanders coming to Manhattan to condemn those in the nation's financial center -- designed to elevate an issue that Sanders sees as a winner with the first votes in Iowa and New Hampshire just a month away.

"The reality is that fraud is the business model on Wall Street," he said. "It is not the exception to the rule. It is the rule."

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