Elizabeth Warren was on the news early Monday morning (May 14) talking about J.P.Morgan. As she pushed her case for more stringent regulations she was asked about breaking up the large banks. But Mrs Warren, who is running for the U.S. Senate is Massachusetts, has skills in talking right through a question without answering it.
The top five banks have approximately 8 trillion of the 13 plus trillion of the other approximately 7,500 banks. That might be a little top heavy. Breaking up the large banks, which now control the dominant share of the nations banking business, opens up the market forces to control not only abuses, but parity of distribution in financing. Without the market forces, banks like J.P. Morgan can become so large they are unmanageable. So, when you are too big and, of course, too big to fail, the government must intervene. The heavy hand of regulation eventually will devolve into government-run banks. This is back-door socialism. I much prefer the market. As the hearings in Congress begin it will be very curious as to who opposes breaking up the big banks. Breaking up the big banks will not eliminate government regulation, but is will sustain autonomy for the banking business. Otherwise, the regulators will infiltrate the management to the point that it retards the agility of banks and the economy as well. Banks could become stressed in order to keep market penetration and that could invite more regulator-business corruption. That is messy ! Keeping oligopolies, in the end, is pro-government and creating competition among the top 5 banks is pro-market. If you let the oligopolies operate relatively free you get the undesirable results we now experience in the petroleum energy field. Mrs Warren did say we should restore Glass-Steagall to the banking business. That could be a very good proposal for the nation. It would again, let a bank be a bank.
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AuthorBill Bays Archives
April 2016
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