There were around 7,600 banks when Dodd-Frank was passed, now there are around 4,500, Dodd-Frank & the CFPB have crushed community banks and driven more and more banking into the MegaBanks

Washington DC has the highest median household income in America outside of California’s Bay Area. $121k, versus the national median of $82k. Can anyone explain to me why this is acceptable? Because I’m struggling to think of reasons why we should be okay with it. Outside of extracting value from the federal government—transferring taxpayer dollars to GS-15s in the administrative state and middle managers in the GovCon-industrial complex—the Capital Beltway has no meaningful economy. It produces almost nothing of value for the rest of our country. It’s not a financial center, like New York ($95k), Bridgeport ($111k), Chicago ($87k), or Dallas ($86k). It’s not the home of any large ports, like Baltimore ($94k) or New Orleans ($61k). It’s not a major research hub, like Boston ($110k) or Raleigh ($96k). It doesn’t even have nice weather, like San Diego ($103k), Los Angeles ($91k), or Honolulu ($103k). Yet the median household in DC makes significantly more than the median in any of these major metropolitan areas. Help me make sense of this, because the more I look at this, the more I start to think the entire system is just a racket.