<story><title>America will soon see a wave of bank mergers?</title><url>https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/04/20/why-america-will-soon-see-a-wave-of-bank-mergers</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wesapien</author><text>You guys should be flipping cars when bank execs didn&amp;#x27;t get jail time for the financial crisis</text></item><item><author>cyclecount</author><text>All of the rules put in place after 2008 are being ignored; the number of banks in the US pre-2008 financial crisis was about 31k.  Now there are close to 3000.  After this wave of mergers, there might be around 1000!&lt;p&gt;And a few will be so large that they can make insane bets, betting on risky and novel new investment vehicles that will (maybe initially) pay off handsomely before ultimately failing dramatically.  This will make &amp;quot;too big to fail&amp;quot; look quaint by comparison and the banks will end up owning everything.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mtlmtlmtlmtl</author><text>Well America has plenty of outrage, but they&amp;#x27;re utterly divided and most that outrage just goes into poopooing the other side, instead of something productive like real demonstrations and protests with a real purpose. Instead we get outrage protests mainly designed for extremist groups to waste their time fighting eachother and playing at civil war.</text></comment>
<story><title>America will soon see a wave of bank mergers?</title><url>https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/04/20/why-america-will-soon-see-a-wave-of-bank-mergers</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wesapien</author><text>You guys should be flipping cars when bank execs didn&amp;#x27;t get jail time for the financial crisis</text></item><item><author>cyclecount</author><text>All of the rules put in place after 2008 are being ignored; the number of banks in the US pre-2008 financial crisis was about 31k.  Now there are close to 3000.  After this wave of mergers, there might be around 1000!&lt;p&gt;And a few will be so large that they can make insane bets, betting on risky and novel new investment vehicles that will (maybe initially) pay off handsomely before ultimately failing dramatically.  This will make &amp;quot;too big to fail&amp;quot; look quaint by comparison and the banks will end up owning everything.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>prasadjoglekar</author><text>That was what Occupy Wall St and Tea Party movements were. Remember that? Before each of them got infested with social-issue parasites of each pole, both were populist reactions to financial injustices.</text></comment>