The “Big Four” retail banks in the United States collectively hold 45% of all customer bank deposits for a total of $4.6 trillion.
The fifth biggest retail bank, U.S. Bancorp, is nothing to sneeze at, either. It’s got 3,151 banking offices and employs 65,000 people. However, it still pales in comparison with the Big Four, holding only a mere $271 billion in deposits.
Today’s visualization looks at consolidation in the banking industry over the course of two decades. Between 1990 and 2010, eventually 37 banks would become JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup.
Of particular importance to note is the frequency of consolidation during the 2008 Financial Crisis, when the Big Four were able to gobble up weaker competitors that were overexposed to subprime mortgages. Washington Mutual, Bear Stearns, Countrywide Financial, Merrill Lynch, and Wachovia were all acquired during this time under great duress.
The Big Four is not likely to be challenged anytime soon. In fact, the Federal Reserve has noted in a 2014 paper that the number of new bank charters has basically dropped to zero.
From 2009 to 2013, only seven new banks were formed.
“This dramatic reduction in new bank charters could be a concern for policymakers, if as some suggest, the decline has been caused by increased regulatory burden imposed in response to the financial crisis,” the authors of the Federal Reserve paper write.
Competition from small banks has dried up as a result. A study by George Mason University found that over the last 15 years, the amount of small banks in the country has decreased by -28%.
Big banks, on the other hand, are doing relatively quite well. There are now 33% more big banks today than there were in 2000.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jan/25/warning-feds-now-foresee-30-trillion-debt/
“I think many people have the mistaken impression that Congress regulates Wall Street. … The real truth is that Wall Street regulates Congress.” — Sen. Bernie Sanders [I-Vt.] in 2015.
“The banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.” – Sen. Dick Durbin [D-Ill.] in 2009.
I can see the POV of the big banks and Wall Street…if they let Congress run them, they’ll just be looted by the voters. So they had to become big and powerful, not subject to Congressional control.
These big banks ARE the government. We are “bank owned”.
What did Rothschild say…..give me control of a nations money and I won’t care who makes its laws .
Do big to fail…too slow not to hang.
What Durbin & Sanders are too stupid to realize is that the consumer “protections” they’ve enacted since 2008 (while Bush was still in office) have increased the cost & difficulty of compliance by small banks, mortgage companies, etc. They’ve driven many of the big banks’ competitors out of business. The big banks are fine with increased regulation and increased disclosure requirements because the have the scale to afford the compliance costs. Smaller companies can’t accommodate the regulation so easily.
Congress and the “big” banks are equally culpable…
plus, they inter-marry, so to speak. Remember, one can
lobby all day, but is no go, if the subject doesn’t take the money.
One isn’t “owned” if one refuses the $. Dick D. (D-lll)
I wonder how much $ this guy has taken to forward a lobbyists
cause.
The graph looks a bit like a March Madness bracket, except with 100% less badketball and 100% more madness.
@Admin: Good to see you quoting Bernie Sanders. As smart as you are, I knew you’d come around.
In the 2008-09 coup, instead of the historically common outcome of socialist revolutions where you end up with socialist state run banks, our clever friends in New York engineered their coup to deliver a socialist bank run state.
And this time the socialism part only applies to the banks and their corporatist friends.
The plan for everyone else is economic cannibalism.
This is not a corrupt or even criminal government.
It’s an enemy occupation.
Bernie Fuckin Sanders…
I watched him during the debates. He looked like a malfunctioning windmill… a very old one.
Banks buy themselves Congressshitters and Senators – shameless influence peddling – and those Congresshitters and Senators pass legislation that directly benefit the banks. They like having a secondary income stream from the banks, and the banks like having wholly-owned elected officials in their pockets.
An incestuous relationship. Thing is, the rest of us get fucked.
Anyone who doesn’t know this or denies it’s reality is either a shill, willfully ignorant or is gaslighting you.
Pretending Bernie Sanders or Dick “the turban” Durbin are issuing some great revelation by stating the obvious and are therefore worthy of praise is just fuckin sad…
By the way, how did this election come down to a fucking ancient addlepated Communist, a criminal Harpy in a pants-suit (who looks like she should play middle linebacker for TJ Maxx) and a megalomaniac billionaire with hilariously bad hair and predilection for Eastern European vaginas?
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Bernie…that’s presidential.