The United States economy was really strongly state oriented and decentralized for years leading up to World War II and through the 1970's. Interstate banking, bank mergers, and centralization of the financial system is really a pretty recent phenomenon that started in the early 1980s and got well underway in Bubba Bill's administration. It didn't take very long for changes to financial regulation to centralize financial institutions and for that centralization to be reflected in corporate America and the day-to-day landscape of the US.
Centralization is a road directly to corruption of every institution in a republic like the United States or even ancient Rome. Centralization of bureaucracy and institutions makes it easy to corrupt and control them using cloak and dagger means. Contrast the the 1970s FBI busting a bunch of congressmen in "AbScam" to the 2000's Bush administration basically carrying out Saudi foreign policy, and the Clinton foundation accepting millions of dollars of "charitable donations" from Gulf states.
A "weak oligarchy" can attach onto and manipulate a strong healthy nation like the United States with unfortunate ease. I don't really know if the state level regulation of the post depression US was aimed at decentralization and establishing more local checks and balances of financial institutions to act as a sort of counter-intelligence defense. If it wasn't intended, it was one of the outcomes.
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