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politico OP t1_jcb51l0 wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in We’re POLITICO econ/finance reporters and a bank regulation expert. Ask us anything about economic politics and policy after Silicon Valley Bank’s shocking collapse. by politico

Thanks for joining us! Victoria here. This is a fantastic question. The U.S. has nearly 5,000 banks (and another 5,000 or so credit unions), so that's a lot of competition. Part of what's strange though, is a lot of that is a vestige of when we used to have restrictions on banking across state lines. So consolidation is perhaps understandable.

You don't want too much concentration in the megabanks (think JPMorgan Chase or Bank of America, which each have more than $3T in assets, compared to SVB, which had roughly $200B). And regional banks like SVB are probably better able to compete with those banks than the little guys. But there's certainly room to debate we don't need as many banks as we have now.

- Victoria

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