I said nothing about banking, but you know I disagree with you both on the way banking works right now (at least in the "old-fashioned" parts of the system) and more generally about the usefulness of intermediaries. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
It's "old fashioned" banking servicing Public (leaving aside differing views as to whether "Public" need be "State") investment that I advocate.
But I don't think that it is necessary - in fact it is downright inefficient - to have banks as intermediaries in the sense of middlemen.
Middlemen intermediaries are obsolescent - this is Migeru's Telluric / tectonic paradigm shift: credit unions are already being "napsterised" ( www.zopa.com etc) - Banks will be next.
I see Banks in the future as service provider intermediaries:
(a) managing the creation of bilateral credit and default pools funded by provisions (not a million miles away from "Trust Banking" eg Japan, TSB as was);
(b) bringing together investors with investment (not a million miles away from investment banking).
As I understand it, the latter is pretty much what you do.
What I am bringing to the table is simply the thought that the conventional deficit-based Financial Capital split between "Equity" and "Debt" may be reconfigured into new "asset-based" forms of Financial Capital that may work more effectively, and equitably.
The same banking disciplines will still apply: it's the "enterprise model" that changes. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
