[tryptophan]

Nothing good has happened after central banking was established either. It's been one financial crisis after another.

Also fun fact - back when the US had private currencies, people WILLINGLY preferred to use them despite a gov currency existing. It is only after the government passed high taxes on these currencies(ie having to pay tax for each transaction to exchange them) that they went out of favor. If they were really so terrible, why did the gov feel the need to kill them?

Central banking is nothing but a power grab. The "it stabilizes the baking system" is nothing but a lie.

[SkyMarshal]

Fwiw in hindsight it appears that structural regulation like Glass-Steagal is what stabilizes the banking system.

Separating banking, investment banking, and insurance into separate legal entities and preventing the banks from consolidating into mega-banks prevented another a Great Depression for ~70years. Then roughly 8yrs after we repealed all that, we unsurprisingly had another Great Depression level financial crisis.

The Fed’s lending support, along with govt stimulus, prevented the actual depression from happening, so you could argue that the Central Bank does have some impact on banking system stability. But it was only necessary because we removed the structural regulation that had maintained a stable banking system for over half a century.

[tryptophan]

> Fwiw in hindsight it appears that structural regulation like Glass-Steagal is what stabilizes the banking system.

This is not at all clear.

> Separating banking, investment banking, and insurance into separate legal entities and preventing the banks from consolidating into mega-banks prevented another a Great Depression for ~70years. Then roughly 8yrs after we repealed all that, we unsurprisingly had another Great Depression level financial crisis.

Are we forgetting the inflationary period in the 70s? How the gold standard was lost during this time? All the emerging market crises? How the USD has lost 98% of its value since the 70s? How inequality is sky high due to interest rate suppression causing asset price inflation? How we have a massive trade defect leading to an extremely large negative net-foreign-investment balance? Does it makes sense to you that countries that are much "poorer" than us are lending us money?

> The Fed’s lending support, along with govt stimulus, prevented the actual depression from happening, so you could argue that the Central Bank does have some impact on banking system stability. But it was only necessary because we removed the structural regulation that had maintained a stable banking system for over half a century.

We trade depression for inflation then. Is this good? Bad? Not sure. We are living in that experiment though. One day this excessive debt and money printing will catch up with us. It has happened to every single fiat currency in history.

[SkyMarshal]

> Are we forgetting the inflationary period in the 70s? How the gold standard was lost during this time? All the emerging market crises? How the USD has lost 98% of its value since the 70s? How inequality is sky high due to interest rate suppression causing asset price inflation? How we have a massive trade defect leading to an extremely large negative net-foreign-investment balance? Does it makes sense to you that countries that are much "poorer" than us are lending us money

You’re conflating a bunch of unrelated things. The single most economically devastating type of event in a banking system is a credit crisis or credit collapse [1]. That’s what both the Great Depression and the Global Financial Crisis were.

All these other things you reference pale by comparison in the level of harm they can inflict on society. Are they bad? Sure. Are they remotely in the same league of harm as the GD or GFC? No.

The point of structural banking system regulation is to prevent this worst case scenario, not to solve every single problem with the banking system. If you can prevent credit collapses from occurring then you’ve significantly improved the stability of the banking system.

[1]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/credit-crisis.asp

[pessimizer]

> How we have a massive trade defect leading to an extremely large negative net-foreign-investment balance? Does it makes sense to you that countries that are much "poorer" than us are lending us money?

If you're against this, what you want is more inflation, not less. This is the entirely intentional result of the strong dollar policy.

[CrazyStat]

>How the USD has lost 98% of its value since the 70s?

By what metric has the USD lost 98% of its value since the 70s?

[pessimizer]

It's hyperbole referring to how much US dollars stored in a mattress 50 years ago would be worth now. If, instead, you earned money from wages and/or invested in stocks/bonds/real estate/comic books, nothing of the sort happened.

[sgerenser]

Even if “the 70s” means 1970, it’s still not 98%, more like about 86% according to: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

[pessimizer]

That's why I said "hyperbole." I should have said "mild hyperbole," but I didn't bother to look up the actual numbers.

[wizzwizz4]

> Also fun fact - back when the US had private currencies, people WILLINGLY preferred to use them despite a gov currency existing.

I'm not much of a historian, but are you referring to company stores? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store

> Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go // I owe my soul to the company store

— Johnny Cash, Sixteen Tons

[shkkmo]

There was an extended period when state chartered banks could print their own currency. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Banking_Era

[cgriswald]

That’s not a Johnny Cash song although he did release a cover of it:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Tons

[wizzwizz4]

Drat. I knew I shouldn't've gone off memory. (Wikipedia says it's a Merle Travis song.)

[chromatin]

No, very different than company store (those "currencies" were referred to as "scrip")

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip

[wizzwizz4]

That Wikipedia article seems to talk about company stores a lot, actually.

> […] even in [locations] that were not [poor], workers paid in scrip had little choice but to purchase goods at a company store, as exchange into currency, if even available, would exhaust some of the value via the exchange fee. With this economic monopoly, the employer could place large markups on goods, making workers dependent on the company, thus enforcing employee "loyalty".

[skybrian]

This isn't good history. You should read more about wildcat banks and the financial crises of that era.

[tryptophan]

https://www.alt-m.org/2021/07/06/the-fable-of-the-cats/

[notch656a]

The federal government is the worst 'wildcat' bank as it's a wildcat bank who has refused to redeem dollars for the gold they said it was backed by (eventually in '71 totally reneging their obligation), at one point even outlawing private ownership of gold (the item the currency was backed by) and actually intentionally destroy the currency by target of at least 2% each year. A wildcat bank whos notes you are compelled to purchase, at pain of being in violation of tax law.

At least in the old wildcat banks, you had a shot of redeeming for specie if you went out to the sticks where the main branch was.

[SantalBlush]

>Nothing good has happened after central banking was established either. It's been one financial crisis after another.

The US financial crises--terrible as they are--are not even remotely comparable to the damage inflicted by a military coup. Putting these two things in the same category is a nonstarter.

[bjelkeman-again]

Do you have any good documentation that backs up your statement that is a lie? I’d be curious to read it.

[wolverine876]

> Nothing good has happened after central banking was established either. It's been one financial crisis after another.

That's not what happened. After the Great Depression, we have not had any crises matching was a a regular cycle before then.

[edgyquant]

You’re entirely wrong here. We haven’t had a depression in over a century and our currency no longer rapidly swings in value depending on the year.