Vol. 1999-3
Readers with good memories will recognize the title of the current report; I have used it, or something much like it, on several occasions in recent years. It means that, once again, I have sorted through letters received from readers during the past year, and have identified a number that offer interesting new insights on the report subjects. These are set forth or described below, along with my comments.
Not all correspondence can or should be included here. One of the most interesting letters had to do with changes in the bank trade association scene, prompted by an earlier report of mine this year, saying that I hoped to be able to deal with that subject later in 1999. I will hold that letter for the present, expecting to put it to use a bit later. Likewise, I have omitted all correspondence relating to my detailed report on the Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) bailout last September, a subject that will be revisited later this year in an already-scheduled report. Otherwise, I selected for comment four subjects addressed by correspondents: 1) the current, so-called, modernization legislation; 2) what I referred to in an earlier report as the "English Experiment," which separated bank regulation from central banking; 3) the reasons for the increase in the number of sizable bank merger transactions, including the role played by the selling banks' managements; and, 4) observations on the influence of government bureaucracies on bank supervision and regulation.
With one exception, I have not identified authors of the various letters but have either summarized or edited them so that identification would not otherwise be possible. I don't mean to imply by this that some startling revelations appear in this correspondence. It is only that some letters were clearly intended to be personal and, therefore, I have treated them all that way, except in the case of an important factual correction to my treatment of bank mergers.