“The Overhead Smash,” is how I describe Big Business’s use of regulation to crush smaller competition. Regulation increases overhead costs. Overhead generally falls heavier on smaller business. For this reason, regulations often benefit the bigger guys by keeping out new entrants and forcing smaller guys to fold.

We could be seeing that in banking, thanks to Dodd-Frank. Check out this report by the Investigative Reporting Workshop. The chief pressures leading to consolidation of the banking sector are market factors, but regulation plays a role: