[quote=KSMountain][quote=CA renter]
But don’t forget that with fractional reserve lending, they are making many times the going rate on our deposits.
If we had full reserve banking, I could see charging people for the service provided by a bank, but with fractional reserve banking, they are already making enough money to pay for all the costs and then some. It wouldn’t be as profitable as it’s been these past couple of decades, but banking is, in itself, unproductive, and should be a much smaller part of our economy.
If the banks can’t cut it, then perhaps our financial infrastructure is important enough to be handled by the Treasury. After all, we don’t really need private banks — especially if they are going to privatize all the profits while foisting their losses on the taxpayers all the time, do we?[/quote]
So you’re saying that we as citizens can somehow determine and then should attempt to enforce a “proper” amount of profit for businesses?
It’s my understanding that jewelry stores have tremendous markup on the products they sell…
Does that mean Ben Bridge and Jessup’s should be forced to give some or all of us free watch cleaning and repair, because they “make enough”?
Should we reduce their profits? Should we be able to say what they can charge, or be able to limit their markup, so that the “most vulnerable among us” aren’t victimized? [BTW, I’m one of them].
I mean really, they have watches there that are like 15,000 dollars. Let’s say their cost was $5000. That’s almost a criminal amount of markup! Shouldn’t we prevent jewelry stores from ripping folks off like that? Perhaps we shouldn’t even allow them to sell baubles that are so unnecessary and expensive.
For that matter, do we even need private jewelry stores? Couldn’t the government serve our wristwatch, necklace, ring and earring needs more fairly? Think how much cheaper things would be if we just took profit out of the picture.
I suppose you could (probably legitimately) say “banks are different’. But once you start down that path, where do you stop? What other industries might we be able to convince ourselves that we should get involved in or privatize? Food production? Medical equipment? Insurance? Aerospace and Defense? Energy?[/quote]
Let me just start off with one of my most controversial positions: compensation SHOULD be regulated if the persons involved are protected by corporate or other limited-liability protections (funny how they don’t seem to have a problem with this *govt* protection!). If someone feels personally entitled to the profits, then they have to take all the losses personally as well — no bankruptcy protection either, BTW. Time to tie risk and reward together.
Our banking system is an integral part of our national infrastructure. Most businesses and people rely on it to transact business. As we were told repeatedly during the banking “crisis,” if the banking system fails, all business stops. Something this important should be highly regulated or controlled by the government.
In areas where people NEED a particular good or service, I believe the govt should regulate or control that market and serve the best interests of society (not the few elite) at all times.
BTW, the TARP is just the icing on the cake. The biggest bailouts came in the form of asset purchases and debt guarantees. Then there are the GSE mortgages and the FHA guarantees (we have still to see what the losses on these will be, we won’t know for many years). This runs into the **trillions** of dollars.
This is from November 2009, when it was up to three TRILLION dollars:
Sorry, but nobody **needs** an expensive watch, and the failure of a watch shop (or all of them, for that matter) would not affect us like the failure of our banking system. It’s not even close to being comparable.
