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America will soon see a wave of bank mergers?

economist.com

131–140 of 451 posts

Re: America will soon see a wave of bank mergers?

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this why some people recommend to take loan for something that you have money? Like - you wanna spend 30K on a car and you have it in cash? take loan you'll lose a some $$, but you'll be building your history.

I think that the usual rationale for taking a loan out to pay for something you can afford without a loan is that you can take the money you have and invest it in something that pays more than what the interest on the loan is. It's a kind of arbitrage. If you're losing money overall, you're doing it wrong.

There’s no free lunch. You will be taking additional risk by doing this even if the downside seems unlikely or remote.

Re: America will soon see a wave of bank mergers?

#132

The big banks are terrible if you fall outside their algorithmic expectation. My partner and I were trying to get a mortgage and despite near perfect credit, large incomes, etc our apps were auto-denied because I never opened multiple open loan lines. Never needed them, just used CCs I immediately paid off for points as I always had a job/savings and bought cheap used cars for cash. We eventually got one but it took…

> The big banks are terrible

Fixed that for you. The big banks have one thing going for them, they're big. That means they will have a wide network and a large service organization, but most feel no need to meaningfully compete for your business. You're going to use them because they're big. You're not going to get meaningful interest on your deposits at a big bank, because they don't need your deposits; bankrate shows me rates up to 4.75%, with banks I've heard of at 4.3%, Ally at 3.75%, my credit union at 2.5% (at least it's moving up, although the pace of increases is a lot slower than the decreases were :/), and Chase is at the national average of big banks: 0.02%. Certainly, 0.02% was understandable in the zero-rate environment, but I'm pretty sure it's been Chase's interest rate for the last 30 years (no data, just a hunch). Mortgage rates float in and out of competitiveness, especially if you jump through the hoops for a relationship discount; that's a good business where volume means profit at origination, and it's easy to sell the loans if they want to (that's part of why their underwriting is so cookie cutter; gotta make it easy to resell).

If you're in the SF Bay Area, you should really check out the local credit unions; some of them are pretty decent. Co-op/shared branch banking takes care of most of the access issues, but you might want to be aware that after hours telephone service is directed to a shared branch call center. My credit union holds and services the mortgages they originate, which means you don't have to deal with the servicing changed dance, and also they're able to do limited paperwork rate adjustments for a reasonable fee; much simpler than a refinance.

Re: America will soon see a wave of bank mergers?

#133
We are still ignoring the original problem....

The original problem behind these regional bank failures is that there is not enough diversity in those having extra cash in accounts and so when a FED rate change comes along that is big enough, those excess funds seek higher rates of interest thus leaving said bank with a problem of legacy assets tied to the old FED rate. We see the same pattern with Apple getting $! Billion in new savings account, yes that is Billion with a b due to their interest rate offering.

In short words a product problem with on one side products tied to the old FED rate and not being nimble enough to offer a product for the excess cash customers have that offers the higher interest rate. Or in short a virtual replay of the S&L crisis in the 1980s without all the corruption behind it.

And one should note that MMA products were suppose to fix this issue.

Re: America will soon see a wave of bank mergers?

#134
post #109

It’s funny how the laws related to fixing “too big to fail” just meant that small banks go away in practice.

This is always the case with regulation. It cements established entities at the expense of smaller/new players.

Except when it prevents merging companies.

Re: America will soon see a wave of bank mergers?

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s still positive. If they want no risk, that number needs to be negative to cover the costs of holding and moving money around.

Eh, this really seems like moving the goal posts. The problem with SVB &other is not that they fundamentally were losing money. They just weren't making _enough_ money so they took on additional risk. If SVB hedged the IRR they wouldn't have gone bankrupt; they just would've had less profit. The banks people want are technically feasible.

There’s no way to provide risk free returns on demand deposits, other than the government just deciding to give away money. Hedging doesn’t magically eliminate risk at zero cost.

Re: America will soon see a wave of bank mergers?

#136
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SQUIRE: When America was in its earlier days, we had a - kind of a populist suspicion about big banks. SMITH: So states looked for ways to support and protect local banks. SQUIRE: A lot of states passed what were called branch banking laws, which made it illegal to operate a bank out of more than one building. It's hard to imagine it now. And so every little town in America had its own local bank. https://www.npr.org…

Is the idea that 'one building' means banks in other states won't open a branch in your state, and so you keep all the taxes?

There used to be rules, at both the state and federal level, restricting interstate banking. Some of those rules were loosened in the 1980s, which allowed big banks to expand and started a wave of consolidation.

Re: America will soon see a wave of bank mergers?

#137
post #126

I'm not convinced that USA needs the thousands of banks it does. Most countries survive with a small set of national banks. There seems to be little downside, and makes sense not to have all the duplicated overhead.

it's sort of a US thing to let alternatives proliferate so they compete with one another, or are supposed to do so, rather than collude and whatever else goes on.

Re: America will soon see a wave of bank mergers?

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banking is fundamentally broken. People want zero risk, demand deposits that pay interest. There’s no business model that can provide that. It would be perfectly possible for a business to provide zero risk demand deposits—-but the business would have to charge customers for its custodial operations rather than making money by writing loans. Of course because we live in times where no one can tell the people that wha…

> People want zero risk, demand deposits that pay interest. There’s no business model that can provide that. > It would be perfectly possible for a business to provide zero risk demand deposits—-but the business would have to charge customers for its custodial operations rather than making money by writing loans That was true when we lived with 0% interest rates. Now, there’s no reason why a narrow bank couldn’t take…

You left out “zero risk”

Banks have always been able to fail, then you lose the deposits. What people are now asking for is unlimited insurance, which encourages risk takings amongst banks

Re: America will soon see a wave of bank mergers?

#139

The big banks are terrible if you fall outside their algorithmic expectation. My partner and I were trying to get a mortgage and despite near perfect credit, large incomes, etc our apps were auto-denied because I never opened multiple open loan lines. Never needed them, just used CCs I immediately paid off for points as I always had a job/savings and bought cheap used cars for cash. We eventually got one but it took…

Is this why some people recommend to take loan for something that you have money? Like - you wanna spend 30K on a car and you have it in cash? take loan you'll lose a some $$, but you'll be building your history.

I don't know what factory car loans look like now, but for my last new car, they offered me a 5-year 0% loan vs a $500 incentive if I paid in cash. Safe interest rate paid for the missed incentive. It's a smidge less convenient to have a loan, but no big deal.

Re: America will soon see a wave of bank mergers?

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banking is fundamentally broken. People want zero risk, demand deposits that pay interest. There’s no business model that can provide that. It would be perfectly possible for a business to provide zero risk demand deposits—-but the business would have to charge customers for its custodial operations rather than making money by writing loans. Of course because we live in times where no one can tell the people that wha…

People aren’t demanding deposit accounts that pay interest. The banks with the most deposits are providing 0.01% interest. People are still sticking their money there more than they put in banks which are offering >3% APR.

This! I want my bank to be a place where I can place money to use for transactions. For returns I have my Vanguard account where I can pick investments for the risk/reward profile I want
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