Quote from Traden4Alpha:
And the problem is worse than that because its not just the reserve ratios of banks, but the reserve ratios of all financial service companies and the range of choices available for companies and consumers.
One of the rationale for loosening regulations on the banks (e.g. repeal of Glass Steagall) was because the banks were losing market share in the financial world -- it was becoming too easy for consumers to put their money in brokerage accounts and too easy for companies to raise capital without borrowing from a tradition FDIC-chartered bank. Some even wondered if the trend would reduce the effectiveness of monetary policy if banks became marginalized elements of the financial system and the Fed's "overnight rate" became nothing more than a suggestion. If banks aren't central to the economy, what power does a central bank have?
Although we can end fractional reserve banking, we can't end fractional reserve behavior by consumers and companies. To the extent that consumers and companies are free to direct money away from risk-conservative banks and into higher return assets, the economy will still have financial crises. That is, we could make the banking system safe but it would consign banking to a marginal role in the economy.
Precisely.
No one will take you seriously, of course.
But the whole reason money market funds became so popular is that they offered higher yields for what most people perceived as only slightly higher, if that, risk than a bank deposit at an FDIC insured bank.
Now that money markets have proven to be in fact riskier than bank deposits, people are beginning to learn that every basis point of higher reward is earned through higher risk.
But no one is going to go to a model that never existed anyway: full reserve banking. It's not a question of going back to this. It's that it never existed in any economy in the modern age - since the Renaissance, that is.
I still have no idea where this moronic stupidity about the eeevuuls of fractional reserve banking came from. You can't have a modern economy without it.
I suppose we could go back to the Middle Ages, let the Catholic Church have control, and outlaw interest on money because time belongs to God.
Actually, we can: in Islamic countries, it's still prohibited to earn interest on deposits. We can live like sheepherders!
That's the ticket.
Read the papers much??