<story><title>Small business rescue earned banks $10B in fees</title><url>https://www.npr.org/2020/04/22/840678984/small-business-rescue-earned-banks-10-billion-in-fees</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lordnacho</author><text>Gotta ask whether the banking system makes sense in its current form.&lt;p&gt;- Part of it is actually a utility. Payments, sending money from one place to another, making sure there&amp;#x27;s an account at the other end of that number. Everyone needs this, yet being a huge international network there isn&amp;#x27;t a whole lot that one bank offers that another cannot.&lt;p&gt;- Part of it is deciding who to lend money to. Makes sense for the bank to decide this with its own money.&lt;p&gt;- Part of it is regulatory. We don&amp;#x27;t want money laundering. Have to ask whether this really ought to be up to law enforcement to do, or as it is now a massive burden on the banks, which also have bad incentives.&lt;p&gt;What if we had the central bank give everyone an account that was interoperable with the rest of the banking system? Then if you want to hand out money, you just do it. If you want to borrow money, find a lender.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JSavageOne</author><text>You outline the problem very well. The banking sector has an ENORMOUS amount of power over the economy&amp;#x2F;society in a way that no other industry does because it literally has the ability to create money out of thin air (by loaning it into existence). The banking industry is the arbiter and credit in our society and decides where money get allocated.&lt;p&gt;This would be fine if it were their own money, but it&amp;#x27;s not - it&amp;#x27;s our bank accounts (ie. fractional reserve banking). Unfortunately individuals can&amp;#x27;t opt out of this because unlike private banks, individuals aren&amp;#x27;t allowed to open a bank account directly with the government (though these replies show that this is possible in countries like France).&lt;p&gt;The finance industry does not generate real wealth, it is a wealth extracting industry that profits off the spread between the interest rate decided by the central bank and the interest rates and fees it charges consumers. Banks do not create goods or services, they just decide who gets the money to do so, with money that&amp;#x27;s not theirs. 80% of bank credit goes to mortgage loans (driving up housing prices and saddling homeowners in debt). Banks have gone from 2% of the U.S. economy in the 1950s to 8% by 2008, and 1.5% of the British economy in 1978 to 15% by 2008.&lt;p&gt;The first step to fixing this is to give citizens the ability to opt out of private banks and bank directly with the central bank. Private banks should not be the only ones with this privilege.</text></comment>
<story><title>Small business rescue earned banks $10B in fees</title><url>https://www.npr.org/2020/04/22/840678984/small-business-rescue-earned-banks-10-billion-in-fees</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lordnacho</author><text>Gotta ask whether the banking system makes sense in its current form.&lt;p&gt;- Part of it is actually a utility. Payments, sending money from one place to another, making sure there&amp;#x27;s an account at the other end of that number. Everyone needs this, yet being a huge international network there isn&amp;#x27;t a whole lot that one bank offers that another cannot.&lt;p&gt;- Part of it is deciding who to lend money to. Makes sense for the bank to decide this with its own money.&lt;p&gt;- Part of it is regulatory. We don&amp;#x27;t want money laundering. Have to ask whether this really ought to be up to law enforcement to do, or as it is now a massive burden on the banks, which also have bad incentives.&lt;p&gt;What if we had the central bank give everyone an account that was interoperable with the rest of the banking system? Then if you want to hand out money, you just do it. If you want to borrow money, find a lender.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>theplague42</author><text>There have been suggestions over the years for the post office to offer banking services. They have branches literally everywhere, they&amp;#x27;re independent yet still a government agency, and have no profit motive.</text></comment>