While the reasons for bank mergers are varied, the bottom line is that the United States is well on its way to developing a truly national banking structure for the first time in its history. We are not quite there yet, but I do not think it will take too many more years.
I must admit that the policy which I pursued in the early 1970s, which entailed an increase in the tax and social security burden of no more than 1 percentage point of the national income per year and which should be seen against the macroeconomic background of the early 1970s, would definitely not be in line with current thinking about fiscal policy.