Excerpt:
For years treasury secretary Tim Geithner lectured Europe on the need to rescue banks as a prerequisite for rescuing economies – and look at the US economy now
America’s banks are bigger than ever. JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs have emerged with more firepower than before the financial crisis following Hank Paulson’s generous bailouts and the freedom to swallow rivals on the cheap.
According to the Federal Reserve the big five held $8.5 trillion in assets at the end of 2011. This enormous hoard, much of it in loans on commercial property or to foreign corporations, is equal to 56% of the US economy. In 2007, ahead of the financial crisis, the largest banks’ assets amounted to a still large, but healthier, 43% of US output.
With only a very brief lull in 2008 and 2009 to check their progress, the big five have grown in every other year of the last decade to double in size.
Source
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/economics-blog/2012/apr/16/us-banks-back-bigger-than-ever
The Big Five generate 80% of residential mortgages. Through the AMCs (Appraisal Management Companies) that they own, a monopsony is created, by which Appraisers have no leverage in the market by which to control their fees.
A monopsony is a market condition where multiple sellers, [the majority of sellers in that market] all have to sell to the same individual buyer because that buyer is buying a significant portion of the entire market. This gives the buyer the advantage because the buyer can keep asking each seller to match or undercut the competing sellers prices, thus driving down the prices of the products in that market.