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Re:Why America will soon see a wave of bank mergers by anigbrowl on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @03:52PM (#35793196)
End the Fed people seem to think a catchy bumper sticker is an argument. Why was the Fed established in the first place? Because people were sick of bank runs and periodic financial panics.

Do incumbents in such a system leverage their status, leading to new kinds of abuses? Arguably yes. That said, SVB was a member bank of the Federal Reserve and it didn't help their shareholders when the market decided that they were over-exposed.

Looking at your assertion from the opposite direction, if you don't trust the Federal Reserve, why would you trust a smaller bank to do a better job? Sure, it's in their long-term interest to self-regulate and operate prudently, but history is full of people acting irrationally because of greed, myopia, confirmation bias etc. The fed at least exhibits moderate transparency of structure and operation - risk is distributed across a set of reserve banks, and the membership and balance sheets of the regional reserve banks are open to scrutiny.

Re:Why America will soon see a wave of bank mergers by mbesto on Wednesday May 03, 2023 @10:08AM (#35802580)
I don't disagree with anything you said. People want an answer to "I'm not sure what the best solution is here, but making the big banks even bigger is not it."

And that's what it basically boils down to. You don't want big banks? Eliminate the Fed.