Released: February 12, 2006

Piggy banker?

Source: By Kathleen Day, Washington Post

Wal-Mart entered the grocery business in 1988 to compete with established names such as Kroger, Safeway and Albertsons, which had dominated food retailing for decades. Today Wal-Mart is America’s biggest grocer, with 16 percent of the U.S. retail food market, and its sales continue to climb, even as dozens of grocery chains struggle.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.‘s decision to jump full-force into toys about 15 years ago has had similar results. Its sales overtook leader Toys R Us Inc. - the inventor of selling toys in big-box discount stores - in 1998. Wal-Mart now has 28 percent of that market. And it’s not just food and toys: Owners of religious bookstores worry about being outpriced by the retailing behemoth. The list of Wal-Mart’s effects on businesses goes on and on.

Congressional lawmakers and federal regulators now face a tough question: Should they permit Wal-Mart to use a legal loophole to enter banking and potentially do in that arena what it has done to nearly every other consumer product and service it has touched?

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