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https://www.wsj.com/articles/obamacare-and-zombie-banks-first-republic-jpmorgan-chase-bank-bailout-fed-deposit-insurance-9bcbb6e2

ObamaCare, Zombie Banks and JPMorgan

The Affordable Care Act depleted the federal government’s capacity for reform.

By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

May 2, 2023 5:40 pm ET

Wonder Land: A beside-the-point president is the best thing that has ever happened to the progressive centralization project. But its success in 2024 depends on whether Republicans back Trump or not. Images: Warner Bros/Kobal/Shutterstock/AP/Zuma Press Composite: Mark Kelly

JPMorgan Chase had to overcome the bad taste left by the deals it did with the federal government in the last financial crisis. Regulators had to overcome their aversion to helping make the nation’s biggest bank even bigger. All of the above had to wrestle with the perverse signal that flows from being even more crosswise with a deposit-insurance system that isn’t supposed to protect more than $250,000 per depositor.

The reachiness of Sunday’s assisted takeover of First Republic only underlines the qualification built into Jamie Dimon’s pronouncement on Monday that “this part of the crisis is over.”