From 37 banks to 4 in 13 years. Hmmm

One might think they need to be broken up.

" ... and the control of wealth will fall into fewer and fewer hands ... eventually into a form in which it can be seized by the proletariat...."

Marx was at least half right. I'm quite interested to see what will happen over the next few decades.

Sadly, I believe this is exactly what will be happening in every industry.
Corporations will buy/merge/consume each other until they dominate the "market share"

I think I allude to this somewhere in my signature below.

Isn't this what happens, almost by design, in an unchecked capitalistic/cannibalistic society?

Well, philosophically I believe things are different with corporations than partnerships and companies.
With the corps, the CEO, Bd of Dir, etc are just "employee" bodies passing through.

With other forms of business the owners are integral to the life of the company.
Family businesses or partnerships get dispersed or sold off, and the business dissolves,
OR... is bought up by a corporation !

When they own the government and are able to stifle competition that will happen. I think somebody needs to run on the old TR "trust buster" platform but now that media is suffering from the same malady, I have little hope for it. We may well end up with a completely stagnant society.

Where's PNC? Where's TD Bank?

PNC (Pittsburgh National ?) may be considered too small
TD Bank is Canadian (It is 2nd largest in Canada)

Is this a natural trend?

I think yes. Wealth accumulates. If nothing is done about it, this will keep going, until it cannot go any further.

Do we have to sit back and let it happen?

No.
The modern economy is something we have created, a lot by individual and corporate activities, and also a lot by governments creating sets of rules that make a stable society and complex finance possible. We can adjust the rules. We should just remember that we are tinkering with a complex, chaotic system and unintended consequences are pretty much certain, as is the further exploitation of whatever changes we make.

Here is an early symptom of retail-market saturation.
There's only so much $ to spend on X-mas.
So retailers' tactics are to get it first, before it's spent elsewhere.

USA Today
Nov 5, 2011

Why wait until Black Friday? Retailers tout big deals early
.

another reason to legalize pot

:thumb: The gooberment will eventually control all of them.

It's the corporations that will own everything.

Yesterday, there was an hour-long TY program about the Pepsico Corp.
The CEO, Indra Nooyi, make a remark something like:

If you put it in your stomach, I want Pepsico to sell it to you.

Corps may own it. The current Gobberment aims to control it. Oh, and make themselves rich along the way. There's your 1%.

That graph is interesting but it needs a third axis.

It is right to consider the risk of dependency and the risk of overdose, but there is also the risk of being mentally screwed up by it without either dependency or overdose.

According to this graph, LSD is the safest drug there is, much safer than caffeine. :headshake