US Banks offering Security Tokens in 2012
"Bank of America ""safe-pass"" generates a code that is sent to your phone as a text message. Its an optional feature, this happens during log in, if you enter that code correctly, then you are taken to your more traditional login, which also features the weak (but widely heralded) two-factor authentication which shows a picture you chose and a password field. Some other banks do other things, but yes, your craigslist phone verification is generally more secure." I'm looking for another one right now. Here's what I've found: Los Alamos National Bank (www.lanb.com) has tokens ($5?), but I think they only open accounts for New Mexico residents. I've had one for several years. USAA Savings Bank (usaa.com) has tokens ($5 or free, I don't remember). I'm pretty sure you do NOT need to be a USAA member to open an account. I've had one for a couple of years. Several banks (Frost Bank, American National Bank of Texas, Amegy Bank, and probably many, many more) offer them as part of their Treasury Management accounts, meant for big businesses and charged for accordingly. Happy State Bank (in, where else, Happy, Texas) has a web page saying they have them but their services charges were more than I wanted to pay. ClearSky Bank (an Internet bank started by Chesapeake Bank) claims on their web page to have them but I haven't verified that yet. Still looking... Charles Schwab and HSBC offer security tokens.
Some credit unions also offer them and support Business banking as well. First Tech Credit Union is a great example. They also have the most security-oriented banking website I've seen to date. https://www.firsttechfed.com/ As a side note I've found that Credit Unions are a MUCH better deal for personal and business banking. What's also interesting is that JP Morgan is heavily involved in the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, to the point of sponsoring conferences and developing their own client [software](https://www.jpmorgan.com/global/Quorum).  Initially this is for private networks but they say they plan to connect to the public chain once it scales better and has stronger privacy features. If a 08 crash and bailout happens again anytime soon I don't know if the banks will get to keep control this time around.  Their power is directly related to the amount of capital they have and there are enough in Congress that see them as not being loyal enough to front the political capital required to refill the coffers if it is needed.   I see the next bailout being the fed making a nationalization attempt. "They're not at all the same. A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment method that pays off early investors with deposits from later ones. Fractional reserve banking is the practice of keeping only a fraction of a bank's demand deposits on reserve, while lending out the rest.  The reserve requirement is how central banks limit the amount of money that can float around in commercial banks. In the latter case, there is no ""later investor"" somewhere down near the bottom of a money food chain.  Every dollar, regardless of whether it was created fresh from one of the federal reserve banks or created via several chained loans, is worth the same.  If the dollars depreciate for whatever reason, they do so for everyone. Now, if you want a good example of a Ponzi scheme that is actually legal, look at Social Security. Edit: A ""debt-based society"" is separate from fractional-reserve banking.  If the Fed creates $1,000,000, the total amount of money that can float around is still capped based on whatever the reserve requirement is.  (For a 10% reserve requirement, it's something like $10,000,000.)  We have unsustainable debt increases because of lack of self-control on the part of our leaders.  The fractional-reserve process helps it along, but it's not the culprit.  It's an enabler." "The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) publishes these and other relevant data on their Statistics page, in the ""Treasury & Agency"" section. The volume spreadsheet contains annual and monthly data with bins for varying maturities. These data only go back as far as January 2001 (in most cases). SIFMA also publishes treasury issuances with monthly data for bills, notes, bonds, etc. going back as far as January 1980. Most of this information comes from the Daily Treasury Statements, so that's another source of specific information that you could aggregate yourself. Somewhere I have a parser for the historical data (since the Treasury doesn't provide it directly; it's only available as daily text files). I'll post it if I can find it. It's buried somewhere at home, I think." Despite QE, monetary expansion in the US has gone down for the last 10 years. I am not quite sure what you are asking. Yes banks have trillions at the Fed because of the central bank “money printing,” but none of that is leaking into the economy. Are you referring to central banks around the world purchasing US treasuries? Are you asking what assets are closely connected to treasuries that you can avoid? "The Wall Street Journal says in its ""For Consumers"" section of its infographic: There's also some new agencies (including a ""consumer watchdog agency""), and some new rules the SEC can implement, and it lets state pass more laws affecting national banks, but it doesn't look like there's much in particular that it does for consumers right away. Source - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704569204575329211031691230.html" Thank you. Added to my list. This is very very helpful. I knew about the blockchain and the currency. Unfortunately, I'm not a pedant about differentiating between them with capitalising the first letter. I do not, however, understand Ethereum very well at all. So will read up. "Yeah... using let's encrypt for the SSL certs.... which I'm certainly not against, but provides even less guarantee they are who they say they are.  High probability of scam.  EDIT: Port 22 is wide open which gives me even less faith.  EDIT 2: I could not find ""Beam"" or ""Meet Beam"" on the FDIC registry either.  https://research.fdic.gov/bankfind/" The separation hasn't existed for a long time. I'm not an expert on the subject but it was a gradual process. Money mutual funds invest in repos and even unsecured instruments that fund investment banking activities and that has been around since way before Glass-Steagall was repealed completely. When it morphed into the shadow banking system we know and love today, who knows? What we can be sure of is that retail, insured deposits were being used to fund investment banking decades prior to the 2000 commodity futures modernization act or w/e its called. Your question contains two different concepts: fractional reserve banking and debt-based money.  When thinking of these two things I think it is important to analyze these items separately before trying to understand how the whole system works. Fractional Reserve Banking As others have pointed out fractional reserve banking is not a ponzi scheme.  It can be fraudulent, however.  If a bank tells all its depositors that they can withdrawal their money at any time (i.e. on demand) and the bank then proceeds to loan out some portion of the depositors' money then the bank has committed fraud since there is no way they could honor the depositors' requests for their money if many of them came for their money at one time.  This is true regardless of what type of money is deposited - dollars, gold, etc..  This is how most modern banks operate. Debt-based money Historically, the Fed would introduce new money by buying US Treasuries.  This means Federal Reserve Notes (FRN) are backed by US Treasuries.  I agree that this seems strange.  Does this mean if I take my FRNs to the Fed I could redeem them for US Treasuries?  But US Treasuries are promises to pay FRNs in the future.  This makes my head hurt.  Reminds me of the definition for recursion: see recursion. Here is an experiment.  What if we wanted to recreate FRNs today and none existed?  The US government would offer a note to pay 100 FRNs in one year and pay 5% interest on the note.  The Fed would print up its first 100 FRNs to buy the note from the US government.  The US government would spend the FRNs.  The first 100 FRNs have now entered into circulation.  At the end of the note's term the Fed should have 105 FRNs since the government agreed to pay 5% interest on the note.  But how is the US government going to pay the interest and principal on the note when only 100 FRNs exist?  I think this is the central point to your question.   I can come up with only two answers: 1) the Fed must purchase some assets that are not debt based 2) the US government must continue to issue debt that is purchased by newly printed FRNs in order to pay back older debt and interest.  This is a ponzi scheme. The record debt levels seem to indicate the ponzi scheme option was chosen. It was $13,000 in 1996 and it's $12,800 now, just to save people a click.  Edit: and that's only a straight average of accounts and only from Bank of America. It could just be that people have chosen to save with another bank or to keep more money in stocks or retirement accounts rather than savings accounts.  This article is pretty much garbage. This depends on the practise and applications available with the Beneficiary Bank. For a corporate customer, the details are show. For Retail customers they are generally not shown. This is the interesting elephant in the room for the Ali IPO. A large component of Ali's revenue is derived from providing customers with access to manufacturers - these manufacturers derive their revenue from selling counterfeit products, internationally.   To allow Ali to go public, effectively legitimises their business activities and leaves you with an organisation that could be comparable to piratebay but for physicals that is considered far more official/legit (read: dangerous)..   Still, it doesn't seem to troubling for America's banking industry and thus - I'll be picking up a fair share of stock when this does happen (probably just for the short-term though, hey). On 2012/05/18 at 15:34:00 UTC (11:34:00 EDT) FB was in chaos mode.  The most recent public US trade at that moment was at $40.94, but in the next one second (i.e. before the clock hit 15:34:01) there were several dozen trades as low as $40.76 and as high as $41.00. On 2012/05/30 at 17:21:00 UTC (13:21:00 EDT) the most recent public US trade for FB was at $28.28.