Investors remain skittish about the stock market's prospects, despite a spate of good third quarter earnings reports. Those figures are already moldy with age as investor's gossip, analyze, and debate over the direction of interest rates.

You almost wouldn't know it for all the obsessive talk about the markets short-term outlook, but finance history was made last week. After some two decades of debate, the House, the Senate, and the Administration favor sweeping away the out-dated depression-era laws that kept separate the banking, insurance, and securities businesses. True, each industry has been invading the others turf for years, but in a haphazard, piecemeal fashion. Regulation will finally recognize that all three are essentially in the same business: managing society's savings.

The implications of the new law are enormous. For instance, like other deregulated businesses, a merger frenzy of potentially unprecedented scale and scope is about to be unleashed in the financial services industry. Regulators rightly worry that these new behemoths will be considered too big to fail, encouraging their managements to throw the dice by lending recklessly throughout the global economy. The company profits handsomely if the gambles win, and taxpayers pick up the tab if it loses--shades of the 1980s savings and loan crisis.

But I want to focus on something that matters deeply to consumers right now: fees. Will fees go higher as the financial services industry rapidly consolidates? After all, fees have soared during the bank mergers of the 1990s, and mutual fund companies have managed to hike their fees year after year during the Great American Bull Market. Or will fees fall, thanks to new efficiencies and heightened competition?

My guess is that most managements intend to raise fees, but the marketplace won't let them. The trend is toward a world of low everyday prices.

First of all, consumers are savvier than before about their finances and money choices. For another, there is the Internet, an irresistible technological force for driving prices down. Witness the impact online trading has had on the securities business. Commissions are plummeting as online trading goes mainstream. It won't be long before individual investors are paying pennies rather than dollars to trade stocks and bonds. What's more, mutual fund companies are under growing competitive pressure to lower the cost of ownership or lose business to the online world.

The Internet will also make fees transparent and price comparisons easy. It won't be long before Internet programs automatically review the fees you're paying on everything from your checking account to your investment portfolio, and offer you a menu of lower cost alternatives with a comparable level of service. High cost providers will lose business to cheaper rivals.

When it comes to fees at least, the gains from merger madness among banks, insurance companies, and Wall Street firms will boost the consumer's bottom line.