More competition also improves the prospects for workers by limiting the monopsony power of dominant employers to constrain wages. In addition to macroeconomic performance, competition policy (and related State aid decisions) is also influential in shaping the European financial system.
In Minneapolis, my predecessor, Gary Stern, and my current head of supervision, Ron Feldman, did their part by writing a book in 2004 called Too Big to Fail. The book identified a host of incentives within the U.S. financial system that encouraged large banks to take on risks that could prove destabilizing. Their book has proven to be distressingly prescient.