ABSTRACT
The goal of balancing competition and soundness is unique to the current debate on finandal structure. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such topics as the needs of customers and the competitive forces that shape the way finandal intermediaries meet those needs were "markedly absent" from the discussion.1 The concept that increasing competition between intermediaries would contribute to the public good by reducing the costs of finandal transactions and widening the number of customers and firms involved in intermediation was edipsed by the competitive struggles between state and federal regulators and the anticompetitive manifestations of finandal concentration. The sodal and economic costs of finandal failures were the burning issues of the day, and soundness regulation received priority attention.
