With Top 4 US Banks Holding $217 Trillion In Derivatives, Total Number Of US Banks Drops To Record Low - WSJ

``... as a result of a broken system that ever since the LTCM bailout has encouraged banks to become take on so much risk they become systematically important, and thus Too Big To Fail, there has been an unprecedented roll-up of existing financial institutions especially among the top, while the smaller, less "relevant", if far more prudent banks have been forced out of business. "The decline in bank numbers, from a peak of more than 18,000, has come almost entirely in the form of exits by banks with less than $100 million in assets, with the bulk occurring between 1984 and 2011. More than 10,000 banks left the industry during that period as a result of mergers, consolidations or failures, FDIC data show. About 17% of the banks collapsed."''