White goes back 200 years, and talks about banking institutions (including the big ones), and bemoans that they had gotten on the path where there was not enough capital to support the institution (in the event of a shock, a run on the bank, or whatever).
What he is really talking about, apart from the discussion of a so called gold or bimetallic standard as such either pro or con, is the practice, largely under regulated, of fractional reserves. Yet, frankly, this was the way that banks had always done business. They had always owned and held less reserves, at any one place or time, than had been necessary to withstand a shock or run.
Another important point, beside that below, one often made, Lewis had said the same thing even in Liar's Poker, was that the big banks had thrown off the personal liability associated with limited partnership business format. As Grant notes, brown Brothers Harriman the only one left, and its balance sheet shows no debt liability overhang.
This made it possible for them not only to grow bigger, but also to take on a quasi public private partnership kind of role, and make it necessary or seem necessary for central banks and governments to bail them (and mainly only them) out in panics/crashes even when they caused them by overspeculating with easy government money.
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