OCT 25

Banking, flight, and film exposure

Oct 28, 2025

The Big Banks (have only gotten bigger)

In 2009, we saw the worldwide economy collapse as a result of over-leveraging the American mortgage industry. This was both the fault of 1) regulatory capture and 2) sheer ignorance. In the aftermath, we saw a new wave of oversight brought down upon American financial institutions:

The Dodd-Frank Act
- Requires systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs) to hold higher capital buffers and undergo annual “stress tests” to ensure resilience during economic downturns
- Increases oversight on credit rating agencies — like Moody’s and S&P — which were criticized for their role in assigning inflated ratings to risky securities during the crisis
Basel III Framework
- A certain percentage of a bank’s capital must now remain liquid
- And there is a now limit on how much can be borrowed against at any given time

Now all of this may sound good. But let’s consider the number of banks which fail each year:

As well as the number of new banks being opened:

So in the aftermath of 2009, we have a large number of banks which have failed. And at the same time, less of them are opening due to an increase in federal regulation. Which means there are fewer and fewer banks controlling more and more of American financials.

Big Tech.

Big Pharma.

Big Oil.

And now Big Banks (which have only gotten bigger).

Human Flight (and perspective)

Do you ever stop and consider what mankind has achieved in the past hundred years? For millennia we crawled, walked, and ran. Never making it higher than the treetops and the cliffs. Then two men obsessed with the mechanics of flight combined the physiology of birds with the industrial motor and created what would ultimately enable our liftoff.

What’s next?