The Long-Overdue News About M&T Bank

There are few people in the United States who know more about the history of banking, and bank regulatory policy in particular, than Charles Calomiris. He literally wrote the book (a fine book at that) about the intersection of the two.

So, it's worth noting when he says things like: "We're really living in a kind of Kafkaesque world now in terms of the way that regulation is done in the banking system," as he told me recently.

Calomiris is referring to the fact that regulation in the bank industry isn't only overly burdensome and difficult to decipher, but also that it's being used by the government to achieve unrelated policy objectives. This has been especially true since the financial crisis, which triggered an overhaul in the regulatory infrastructure in the country more in one fell swoop than at any other time in the past, save for the Great Depression and the Civil War.

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Source: Fool.com