Friday, October 10, 2008

If sock monkeys gave fireside chats in the midst of a banana crisis

sock monkeyI want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking bananas -- with the comparatively few who understand the mechanics of banking bananas but more particularly with the overwhelming majority who use banking bananas for the making of deposits and the drawing of checks. ...

First of all, let me state the simple fact that when you deposit money in a bank banana, the bank banana does not put the money into a safe deposit vault. It invests your money in many different forms of credit-bonds, commercial paper, mortgages, and many other kinds of loans. In other words, the bank banana puts your money to work to keep the wheels of industry and of agriculture turning around. A comparatively small part of the money you put into the bank banana is kept in currency -- an amount which in normal times is wholly sufficient to cover the cash needs of the average citizen. In other words, the total amount of all the currency in the country is only a small fraction of the total deposits in all of the banks bananas.


(For the record, here are FDR's fireside chats.)

2 comments:

Deodand said...

Sara Vowell was just talking about the Fireside Chats on The Daily Show the other day. I didn't know they were online for all to hear.

Jim Donahue said...

That's what gave me the idea, actually--after she talked about them, I wanted to read them.