Something to be said

“What’s curious about the relative health of the New Zealand banking system is that it’s dominated by four big Australian banks,” writes The New Yorker’s James Surowiecki. “This seems to complicate the oft-floated argument that having a financial system dominated by big banks necessarily leads to regulatory capture or excessive risk-taking. All four, while suffering from the effects of the current recession, are firmly profitable, and, more importantly, have avoided most of the big bad bets that other international banks made.”