Big bidness again

In an earlier post that was no doubt cherished by discriminating followers of this blog, I made the point that for various reasons bigness is here to stay, notwithstanding the anti-bigness attitudes fostered by the reckless behavior of our largest financial institutions. Well this morning David Weidner has a column in the Wall Street Journal pointing out some of the global pressures that push financial institutions toward great size. A key observation:

"Even after massive consolidation, the United States remains one of the least concentrated banking markets in the developed world," Oliver Wyman concluded in a report released Wednesday.

I would emphasize that these posts of mine aren't so much a defense of bigness as they are observations about its inevitability in the modern world. For better or worse bigness has its uses, in business as well as government, and generally speaking I see no alternative to it, even in the financial arena.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2009/06/big-bidness-again/20096/