Moreover, many nonbank financial institutions are now profitably engaged in nonfinancial activities. Current facts and expected future trends, in short, are creating market pressures to permit the common ownership of financial and nonfinancial firms. In my judgement, it is quite likely that in future years it will be close to impossible to distinguish where one type of activity ends and another begins.
Nonetheless, it seems wise to move with caution in addressing the removal of the current legal barriers between commerce and banking, since the unrestricted association of banking and commerce would be a profound and surely irreversible structural change in the American economy.