The structure and performance of financial systems is path dependent. The relative stability of the Canadian banks in the recent crisis compared to the United States, where the recent crisis originated in the shadow banking system and spread to the universal banks, in our view reflected the original institutional foundations laid in place in the early 19th century in the two countries. The Canadian concentrated banking system that had evolved by the end of the twentieth century had absorbed the key sources of systemic risk—the mortgage market and investment banking—and was tightly regulated by one overarching regulator. In contrast the relatively weak and fragmented U.S. banking system that had evolved since the early nineteenth century, led to the rise of securities markets, investment banks and money market mutual funds combined with multiple competing regulatory authorities. The consequence was that the systemic risk that led to the crisis of…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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