"FDR didn’t do anything about a major cause of 90 percent of the bank failures, namely, state and federal unit banking laws. These limited banks to a single office, preventing them from diversifying their loan portfolios and their source of funds. Unit banks were highly vulnerable to failure when local business conditions were bad, because all their loans were to local people, many of whom were in default, and all their deposits came from local people who were withdrawing their money. Canada, which permitted nationwide branch banking, didn’t have a single bank failure during the Great Depression." 

“David Lawrence, founder of US News & World Report, warned, 'Confiscation of wealth may satisfy the vengeful in us. It may sooth a retaliatory spirit. But it is the path of national suicide...There must always be the reward motive. To many people it is but another way to set goals of human ambition...When government kills the opportunity to earn, it sounds the death knell of the opportunity to serve.'"

–Jim Powell, FDR’s Folly