if you're opposed to fractional reserve banking, you're essentially also opposed to bank loans.

banks aren't so different from crowd lending platforms. you deposit money and earn interest on it from loans given by the bank to other customers on your behalf.

the difference is that the bank takes a higher risk because you may ask to withdraw at any moment, such as happens during a bank run. most banks have guarantees from the central bank for such occasions.

if banks couldn't lend your money to other people and take a cut, they'd be charging you just to have an account. (maybe your bank charges for that, but most will only charge you for things like debit cards, transfers to other banks and overdrafts.)

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

if banks could not lend money to you on behalf of their other customers, you'd be looking at borrowing from profitable corporations or wealthy individuals to get a mortgage. i suspect they'd be a *lot* more selective about who they lend to, since that's *their* money they're handing out. banks just handle other people's money.

You don't need fractional reserve lending for loans to exist. You do need fractional reserve lending for wealth to concentrate at the banks. A loan can happen if the bank is held to only loaning against existing reserves, what won't happen is loans for things that don't produce. This doesn't seem so bad to me.

#[0]

And health insurance err all insurance for that matter…