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Botching the Coverage of a Bank Run / Dean Baker

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We could structure the financial system differently. We could have the Federal Reserve give us all transactions accounts. Every person, every company in the country, can have account with the Fed where our paychecks deposit every month, where we pay our mortgage, our rent out of it. We pay our credit card bill, our electric bill, whatever it might be, all paid for minimal cost. We have the technology. This isn't pie in the sky stuff. We've had the technology probably 10, 15, 20 years, and that would save us tens of billions of dollars a year in bank fees. Now, we would mean you'd have much less money in banks and you'd have fewer people making 9 million and 20 million and these, these exorbitant salaries, we'd still have banks…But obviously the those people don't want that. So the banks to fight like crazy to prevent anything like that from happening. I always love to throw it out there cuz I think it's really good policy, but also you have this whole group of people who call themselves neoliberals. The idea is they like the market, they like efficiency. I go, this is efficient, so why don't you like it? They could fill in their own explanation. One obvious point is if we went that route, a lot of rich people would have to work for a living.

Center for Economic Policy and Research Senior Economist and longtime friend of the show Dean Baker edifies us with his analysis of the mainstream media's irresponsible reporting on the failure of Silicon Valley Bank along with some remarks on how the financial system might be restructured.

You can follow Dean's musings on his Center for Economic Policy and Research blog, Beat the Press: cepr.net/blog/dean-bakers-beat-the-press/

 

 

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Dean Baker

Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

 

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