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    numbers can sometimes mean things..., 2008-10-16 14:05:46 | Main | life sucks harder..., 2008-10-17 12:49:38

    too big to fail is also big enough for smashing to bits:

    You could imagine how Maximum Leader Paulson and his banking posse would hate such an arrangement:

    The late multiplication of banking companies in both parts of the United Kingdom, an event by which many people have been much alarmed, instead of diminishing, increases the security of the public. It obliges all of them to be more circumspect in their conduct, and, by not extending their currency beyond its due proportion to their cash, to guard themselves against those malicious runs which the rivalship of so many competitors is always ready to bring upon them. It restrains the circulation of each particular company within a narrower circle, and reduces their circulating notes to a smaller number. By dividing the whole circulation into a greater number of parts, the failure of any one company, an accident which, in the course of things, must sometimes happen, becomes of less consequence to the public. This free competition, too, obliges all bankers to be more liberal in their dealings with their customers, lest their rivals should carry them away. In general, if any branch of trade, or any division of labour, be advantageous to the public, the freer and more general the competition, it will always be the more so.

    On the other hand, we should probably take it under advisement. Course, we'd probably need to get rid of this whole federal reserve thing in the process, and you'd still have problems with asset bubbles. Smith published this little ode to smaller and more numerous Scottish and English banks in 1776, not two decades later the canal bubble burst into a fine financial panic.

    Via former and better Fed Chairman, Paul Volcker, as it happens.


:: posted by buermann @ 2008-10-16 22:40:40 CST | link





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