With the Congress’s support, we have also taken action to relieve small holding companies of certain requirements by raising the asset threshold for the Board’s Small Bank Holding Company Policy Statement from $ million to $ billion, and by applying this statement to small savings and loan holding companies.
The long period of financial repression, that is, direct control on bank lending to the private sector and force-feeding banks with government debt instruments had made the core business of commercial banks safe between the mid-1930s and the early 1970s. Central banks’ function of maintaining financial stability by way of regulation and supervision had atrophied.