On Too Big To Fail As A Company Strategy and Other Links
Here are two stories I found interesting. The first is on a BIS paper which says that there are no real scale economies beyond a certain point in banking. Company size is driven by the implicit taxpayer guarantees too big to fail financial institutions get. The second story is in German but says the same thing about the mergers of healthcare providers in Germany – there is no reason for the mergers except to gain too-big-to-fail size.
- BIS: it’s the implicit taxpayer guarantee that drives banks to get bigger – Telegraph
- Fusionen: Experten warnen vor Kollaps bei den Krankenkassen – WELT ONLINE
Warren Buffett
- Buffett gets in a bind over options| Reuters
- Buffett on World’s Growing Wealth – WSJ.com
- Thirty US billionaires pledge to give away half their fortunes to charity | Technology | guardian.co.uk
The Usual Fare
- An August Surprise from Obama? | James Pethokoukis
- Economist’s View: Tax Cuts and the Stimulus Package
- Fehlende Bewerber: Tausende Lehrstellen bleiben unbesetzt – SPIEGEL ONLINE
- BBC News – Property prices soar in the desert
- FT.com – Obama must show that he knows his limits
- For-Profit Colleges Caught On Video Encouraging Financial Aid Fraud – The Consumerist
- Thoughts on the Controversial Medicare Andy Griffith Ad – Swampland – TIME.com
- How Much Debt Should Households Have? – Economix Blog – NYTimes.com
- China’s overhang of empty apartments Caixin Online – MarketWatch
- Barney Frank defends support of bank after call from disgraced pol – BostonHerald.com
- Capping the Bottle: Germany Looks to Tighten Up Public Drinking Rules – SPIEGEL ONLINE
- Courthouse In Florida Has 35,000 Body Scans Of Citizens – The Consumerist
- Graham: 14th Amendment outdated – Andy Barr – POLITICO.com
- Android Now Top Selling Smartphone Operating System – Mashable
- This Is Neither Effective Deficit Reduction Nor Personnel Policy | Capital Gains and Games
- FT Alphaville » IMF blueprint for a global currency – yes really
I can recall a Mckinsey paper from the ’90’s which stated that banks achieved scale economies through mergers-but only up to $150M! In my experience, gargantuan banks incur excess costs in efforts to coordinate-multiple lines of business, multiple markets-and countries, and regulators, and the ‘left undone’ tasks from prior mergers (see Citi, BoA in this regard) such as multiple IT systems and back offices. They’re slow, late and non-responsive-because they have too many execs and too many layers of bureaucracy. See Yves Smith for more in this regard.