This is a troubling trend for small town America. According to research by Marshall Lux at Harvard University, the Dodd-Frank financial system overhaul has created a class of banks “too small to succeed.” The nation’s small banks have lost 12% of their share of the financial market since the act was passed to regulate the banks “too big to fail.” From 2006 to 2010, community banks only lost 6% of their market share. “It’s hard to imagine that remote parts of the country are going to be served by these larger consolidated banks,” Lux told the Financial Times. “If the trend continues, we’re going to see fewer community banks and more substitutions that would not be under the same scrutiny.” Furthermore, Investor’s Business Daily said the battery of legislation is restricting the number of loans going out to homeowners, farmers and small businesses. “Small bankers provide roughly half the nation’s loans to small businesses, the economy’s jobs engine,” IBD writes. It’s a lesion with dire repercussions: The streams of regulation coming from the swamp along the Potomac rarely help the rest of America. More…