Universal Banking In The United States

In 1933 and 1956, the United States sharply limited the kinds of securities activities, commercial activities, and insurance activities banks could engage in. The regulations imposed on banks back then remain in place despite profound changes in the economic environment, in the structure of the national and international financial markets, and in technology. In this span of time many industries, especially those confronting global competition, have transformed themselves dramatically in their efforts to survive and prosper. Not so in the American financial services sector, banks have largely remained stuck in an antiquated regulatory structure which has placed the burden of responding to the needs of market-driven structural change on the shoulders of the regulators and the courts in a constant search for loopholes in the law. The purpose of this book is to evaluate the case for and against eliminating the barriers that have so long existed between banking and other types of financial services in the United States. Universal Banking in the United States studies the consequences of bank regulation in the U.S. as it relates to competition in international financial markets. Anthony Saunders and Ingo Walter examine universal banking systems in other countries, especially Germany, Switzerland, and the U.K., and how they work. They then apply the lessons to U.S. banking, paying particular attention to the benchmarks of stability, equity, efficiency, and competitiveness against which the performance of national financial systems should be measured. In the end, the authors propose the outlines of a level playing field on which any number of forms of organization can grow in the financial services sector, in which universal banking is one of the permitted structures, and where regulation is linked to function.

The latest in a series of studies in banking and international finance. This book deals with all aspects of the Glass-Steagall Act, and the relationship between the commercial banks and the investment banks.

"The worldwide financial services industry has undergone in the past two decades an unprecedented wave of consolidation within and across its three main sub-sectors: banking, securities activities and insurance. Today's observers assert that in ten years, most of the financial sector will be controlled by a small group of huge diversified banks. By enacting the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, Congress repealed the depression-era "Glass-Steagall" Act of 1933 and thereby officially removed the longstanding legal barriers that insulated banks from securities firms and insurance companies. As promoters of financial convergence have long been claiming that the introduction of universal banks in the United States would produce numerous benefits for themselves, but also for the economy and for their customers, these predictions can be assessed today in the light of empirical analysis. Now that "financial supermarkets" are totally legal in the United States, it is essential to assess whether they are economically and morally viable." --

"Universal Banking: Financial System Design Reconsidered is the product of a conference held under the auspices of the New York University Salomon Center in February 1995. The conference was based upon the work of academic observers of the banking industry in the United States, Europe, and Japan."--BOOK JACKET.