Wednesday, January 23, 2013

The Difference Between Banks in the Old Days and Today


Doug Casey explains:
 In the old days, when Jesse James or other thieves robbed a bank, all the citizens would turn out to engage them in a gun battle in the streets. Why? Because it was actually their money being stored in the bank, not the bankers’ money. 
A robbed bank had immense personal consequences for everyone in town. Today, nobody gives a damn if a bank is robbed. They’ll get their money back from a US government agency. The bank has become impersonal; most aren’t locally owned. And your deposit has been packaged up into some unfathomable security nobody is responsible for.

4 comments:

  1. This is a big reason why an entire economy was far less likely to go into the toilet.

    People had pride in their communities. Bureaucracy was held in check far more effectively when local people controlled local interests.

    Today, people are corporate pawns to be moved all over the planet. I have nothing against corporations of course, except when they partner with government.

    While the past was not completely romantic, I think that the talent of the past was more inclined to be nutured and respected. Now management has little stake in the company. So...run the company into the ground and suck all the profit you can. If it dies, it dies.

    Gary North gives great advice: try to provide services locally that are being done poorly or not at all. Insulate yourself as best you can from global competition.

    People often argue that we need government today because large-scale industry depends on it.

    I say that we would not have had such unsustainable large-scale growth of everything without government intervention. Instead of building on solid rock, with the ability to maintain what's been developed (including population growth), we've built on sand. We've overextended ourselves.

    Free decentralized banking would not have allowed this to happen on such a scale.

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    Replies
    1. limited liability corporations are a creature of the government.

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    2. Limited liability is currently granted by the government, but the market could easily replicate it through indemnification/insurance and through contract.

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  2. Sure, but the REAL main difference is that the banks of 1850 weren't linked into a global network of central banks run by the cabal of evil moneychangers... who have a universal license to counterfeit money whereever and whenever they see fit... and who loan the earnings of future generations to politicians TODAY, so they can use entitlements to buy votes from idiotic sheep.

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