57 Percent of US Banks Have Disappeared, Thanks to Bill Clinton

New Regulations Shutter Banks

Most good business practices include the idea of spreading the risk. These legislative pieces, all signed by Bill Clinton, eliminate the ability to spread the risk and create a few major players that are “too big to fail,” meaning that the government and the taxpayers bear the burden of supporting them so that they do not fail, even as they make trillions of dollars and shift the risk to us. No wonder Wall Street is beholden to both Clintons, because they have made a few Wall Street barons very, very rich, even while destroying the system that kept our economy on an even footing for so many years.

In 1934, there were 14,146 commercial banks with FDIC insurance in the United States. By 1985, that number had barely budged – we had a total of 14,417. But as of this month, we have 6,172 FDIC-insured commercial banks, a decline of 57 percent, with the annual declines accelerating after the passage of Riegle-Neal in 1994.

Making the banking system decidedly grim in terms of both competition and the potential for more taxpayer bailouts, of the current 6,172 banks holding a total of $15.9 trillion in assets, just four banks (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citibank, a unit of Citigroup, hold 41 percent of those assets – rendering them too-big-to-fail and an albatross around the neck of the country’s economic prospects and the taxpayers’ pocketbook. (All four of the banks took billions of dollars under the Troubled Assets Relief Program during the 2008-2010 financial crisis and Citigroup received the largest bank bailout in U.S. history: $45 billion in equity infusions, over $300 billion in asset guarantees, and more than $2 trillion in cumulative, below-market rate loans from the Federal Reserve — loans that were initially kept secret from the taxpayer.)

By allowing these mega banks to gobble up banks all over the country and stick their logo on thousands of insured-deposit branches across America, Bill Clinton effectively created too-big-to-fail. And because these same handful of banks are dangerously interconnected as counter-parties to trillions of dollars in opaque derivative gambles, when the stock market sinks their share prices sink in tandem, raising ongoing worries of another banking contagion similar to 2008.

Bill Clinton ran for president on a platform of being out to help the little guy. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign web site says she “wants to be a champion for everyday Americans.” But the wrecking ball that Bill Clinton took to investor protection banking legislation during his two terms as President, the millions of dollars that have flowed from Wall Street into both Hillary Clinton’s campaign coffers and her personal bank account from speaking fees, should tell voters all they need to know.

Unfortunately, a new U.S. banking crisis appears to be in the wings in the very near future, and it could be significantly worse than the recession of 2008. Hillary Clinton is talking about her desire to help “the common folks” in her campaign speeches, but her relationship, in concert with husband Bill, to the Wall Street megafirms appears to be anything but arms length, and their huge financial support for her and her campaign suggests that the taxpayers need to hold onto their wallets and vote “no” unless they want to be fleeced one more time by the Clintons and their crony Wall Street thieves.

Source: wallstreetonparade.com