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And, sure enough, one of the selling points of these megadeals is the idea that smart software will reshape the relationship between banks and customers. In a nonstop tango of bits and bills, the computers at the new Citigroup or at BankAmerica will zip through accounts looking for better ways to make money for both you and the bank. And the banks will use that efficiency to lever into the most profitable parts of the financial world: investment banking, stock underwriting and insurance.
Those that don't will be casualties. McColl (who gives crystal hand grenades to prized employees) understood early on that one day banking was going to be like war. Call it semper finance. Says David Chaum, the visionary guru behind DigiCash, a Net-based currency: "What you find in retail banking today is that some banks see themselves as acquirers, and others see themselves as, well, acquirees." On the day the Travelers deal was announced--creating a giant with $42 billion in equity--vice presidents at still independent Goldman Sachs nervously fingered their E-mail with questions about when the famously private firm might seek a public offering to raise more cash in order to boost its size. Technology and deregulation have--even for a firm with profits north of $3 billion--turned the competitive heat way, way up. "In five years this firm may be run by a software guy," Goldman CEO Jon Corzine once mused to TIME. A geek at the helm of Goldman? Goodness.
There are few permanent rules in the world of finance--maybe only one: make money--and even those are starting to come unbuttoned. In the past 10 years, decades of regulations--such as the Glass-Steagall Act, passed in the Depression to help limit risk following a banking-system failure--have been all but abandoned, a testament to the fact that all markets move on--and none faster than money markets. The last time this happened was in 1982, when the Garn-St. Germain Act repealed old regulations and allowed savings and loans to graze for investments in areas like real estate and mineral development. The result was an unmitigated disaster, with taxpayers getting stuck with a $500 billion mess.
What are the risks associated with a brave new world of Cayman Island trust funds and retirement accounts built on leverage? No one yet knows. But some suspect. Sholom Rosen, vice president of emerging technologies at Citibank, has what may be the perfect mantra: "It's definitely new, it's revolutionary--and we should be scared as hell."
The fundamental idea driving this revolution is that technology and finance have become one and the same. As William Niskanen, chairman of the Washington-based CATO Institute, puts it, "The distinction between software and money is disappearing." And nowhere is that truer than in the world of cold, hard cash.