Talk:Banking in the United States

Good Article project post
I believe that this article can go to Good Article status. I will edit and format certain section but I won't nominate or participate in the actual nom as it is time consuming. The main problem is length, contrary to what editors might believe, this is not Economy of the United States or Economy of New York City. The former two articles are very detailed and substantial. Banking in the United States should have a clear prominent lead giving it an overview and serve as a directing page. For example, instead of having a section called "History" and simply copying/pasting all of what is on the History of banking in the United States, write a small introduction and link a MA to it. Future editors: feel free to use the space below to hash out improvements. LivinRealGüd (talk) 03:31, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

I came here to flesh out some knowledge for a presentation on banking regulation I have to do for work and was a little disappointed in the article. The introductory section is mostly history and probably needs to be in the history section. It doesn't really talk about the characteristics and structure of the US banking system. Shouldn't it describe the (fairly unique) dual banking system in the US and perhaps the roles of the various players?

The history section itself could use some help. It's hard to summarize some 230 years of banking history in a few paragraphs, but spending about a third of the text on examples from one US territory doesn't make sense.

A couple sentences from the history section stood out in particular:

"In the early 1700s, merchants traveled from Britain to the United States and established the Bank of Pennsylvania in 1790 to fund the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783)."
 * This is worded a little poorly imho. For one thing, it reads like "some merchants came over in the early part of the century and... bam! ... 70-80 years later established a bank to fund a war that had been over for 7 years."
 * Really B of P was originally chartered in 1780 while the war still raged. It was re-chartered in 1793.
 * Also, they didn't come to the United States in the early 1700s; they came to the British colonies in North America. And some came before the 1700s. Probably the whole first clause on travelling merchants can be dropped.

"The Great Depression saw to the separation between investment and commercial banking known as the "Glass-Steagall Act",[1] but the Act was repealed in 1991 leading to the 2008 financial crisis.[1]"
 * "The Great Depression saw to...": The Great Depression was an event. Events don't "see to" something; people or groups of people do. Here it would be more clear to say that Congress passed Glass-Steagall in part to separate investment banking from commercial banking and perhaps say briefly why.
 * GSA was repealed in 1999, not 1991.
 * "...leading to the 2008 financial crisis." This seems to suggest that repealing GSA caused the 2008 crisis and gives an editorial from the WSJ as a source for that claim. The referenced article does not mention Glass-Steagall at all. Economists from across the spectrum have different views on the role that repealing GSA played in the 2008 crisis, ranging from "no role" to "a significant role" but I'm not aware of any who suggest it as the singular event that launched us almost 10 years later into a major recession.
 * This statement also conflicts other Wikipedia articles on the subject. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gdvanc (talk • contribs) 00:54, 16 September 2019 (UTC)