Worldwide financial crisis largely bypasses Canada

Just for EC, this article from the Washington Post looks at why the US financial crisis has had little impact on Canada. One interesting point is

According to the Canadian Banking Association, one reason for the system's solidity is that banks are national in scope. Each of the largest five institutions has branches in all 10 Canadian provinces, meaning they are less susceptible to regional downturns and they can move capital from region to region, as needed. "As far as I am aware, no American bank has branches in all 50 states," banking association spokesman Andrew Addison wrote in an e-mail.

and

Another difference is that in Canada, mortgage interest is not tax-deductible, making it harder to buy a house. [...] People do not take out mortgages just for the tax break. In Canada, "a mortgage is seen as something you want to get rid of as fast as possible," said Peter Dungan, an economist with the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

But it's not just today that the Canadian bank system has looked good. Consider this graph from Mark Perry at the Carpe Diem blog

Perry writes

The McFadden Act of 1927 specifically prohibited interstate branch banking in the U.S., and only allowed banks to open branches within the single state in which it was chartered. Therefore, U.S. banks were forced to be small and local, with an undiversified loan portfolio tied to the local economy of a single state, or a specific region of a single state. The strict regulatory framework of the McFadden Act created a delicate and fragile banking system that could not easily withstand the shock of the Great Depression. Exhibit A: 9,000 banks failed in the U.S. in the early 1930s (see chart above).

Perry goes on to quote from an article from the San Francisco Federal Reserve,

During the Great Depression years—1930 through 1933—5.6%, 10.5%, 7.8%, and 12.9% of U.S. banks failed in each year; by the end of that four-year stretch, almost half of U.S. banks had either closed or merged. Bernanke (1983) argues that this banking crisis worsened the magnitude of the downturn because credit supply fell as banks failed. Thus, many firms were unable to finance potential investments. Most of the failed banks were small and operated out of just a single office. In Canada, where not a single bank failed, branching was the rule; in fact, Canada had only ten large banks during the 1930s. The Canadian economy fared much better than did the United States economy, in large part because of its better diversified and integrated banking system. (emphasis added)

Perry's bottomline

Strict banking regulations are not always the answer to creating a sound and stable banking system. Exhibit A: The McFadden Act and The Great Depression, and the fact that 0 banks failed in Canada (due to a more sensible regulatory system) vs. 9,000 bank failures in the U.S. largely due to the repressive regulatory framework of the McFadden Act.

Score one for Canada!