[bbgtpm]

Banks allocate real resources in the economy, and the instrument by which they exercise this power is making loans (printing money) for projects they deem appropriate. I think often people get the causality backwards: banks don't have more power than other institutions and people because of their ability to loan money into being, they have the ability to make loans because of their existing power. That is, loans are merely the mechanism by which banks exert their power over resource allocation in the real economy. This Swiss referendum may put the kibosh on this particular style of loan generation, but I see no evidence that private banks won't just create a new system of loan accounting and money creation for the central bank to implement which will accomplish the same outcome within the parameters of the new referendum.