Commentaries (some of them cheeky or provocative) on economic topics by Ralph Musgrave. This site is dedicated to Abba Lerner. I disagree with several claims made by Lerner, and made by his intellectual descendants, that is advocates of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). But I regard MMT on balance as being a breath of fresh air for economics.
Friday, 24 August 2018
The popularity of structured deposits in China bodes well for full reserve banking.
I’m not an expert on structured deposits, but they seem to be ordinary bank deposits with conditions attached, or with some clearly defined element of risk over and above the risks attached to ordinary bank deposits (which are negligible in the UK, of course). For example, the interest paid on a deposit, or the proportion of the capital sum repaid might be related to stock market performance, or the dollar / Euro exchange rate, or you name it.
If you Google “China” and “structured deposit” you’ll find plenty of articles on the subject.
That all bodes well for full reserve banking, or at least the Lawrence Kotlokoff version of full reserve. Under Kotlikoff’s system, depositors would have a choice as to what is done with their money. E.g. if they want their money to be loaned only to conservative mortgagors, e.g. mortgagors with some minimum equity stake in their homes, depositors would be free to do that under Kotlikoff’s system
The popularity of structured deposits in China seems to indicate that many if not most depositors are well able to make that sort of choice.
Plus giving depositors that sort of choice ought to result in a more stable bank system. Reason is that under the existing system, bankers are relatively free to so to speak use grandma’s savings to bet on derivatives. In contrast, if grandma and other depositors said they want their money to be loaned just to UK based conservative mortgagors (which at a guess is what the typical UK depositor does want), the bankers’ scope for smart-arse derivative based nonsense is reduced.
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