It does not seem far-fetched to think that, with time and sufficient economic incentive, the financial, technological, and regulatory barriers to the disintermediation of prudentially regulated dealers could be overcome. Indeed, there have already been reports of some hedge funds exploring the possibility of disintermediating dealers by lending cash against securities collateral to other market participants.
Yet employment, measured by the count of persons who are working rather than by the count of jobs, has been rising 2 percent a year since 1995 despite the acceleration in the growth of output per hour.