Your Friendly Banker

   Senator Warren brought into public hearing a few days ago a simple statistic: big banks get a one half percent better interest rate than smaller banks. They get the discount from lenders because they get bailed out by the U.S. Government and are expected to be bailed out again when their next group bankruptcy looms. Big banks are "wholesalers" of money: they re-lend borrowed money at a profit to other banks, institutions, and individuals.

The discount for the big banks amounts to somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 billion dollars a year. That also is the amount of profit the banks make in a year.

Think about it.

Not only are the banks insured against bankruptcy by the American people, they are, by the reckless behavior the government insures them from the consequences of, producing a regular series of economic catastrophes.

Their banking skill, knowledge, expertise, their profit, is entirely a matter of getting from the American government the insurance that allows them to go on year after year wrecking the economy.