Regulatory Experience in the US and It's Lessons for European Banking Union

The regulatory system has taken 150 years to develop in the US. Even today it is far from unified with four supervisory "agencies" overseeing banking organizations, i.e., 50 State Regulatory bodies, the OCC, the FDIC and the Federal Reserve, with a wide variety of individual and often overlapping powers such as in examination and supervision. The Euro-zone is at the very start of what will be a long and difficult process and whether unification is achievable across such a diverse set of economies with competing local supervisors and diverse bankruptcy laws remains to be seen. Nevertheless, the US is a useful laboratory to examine the benefits and costs of different approaches to the three "legs" of European bank union, i.e., supervision, deposit insurance and restructuring/resolution.