[Toddsterpatriot]

But that also means they'll not be leaching off the rest of society by creating credit out of thin air and loaning it at interest.

Borrowing money and lending it out doesn't sound evil to me. Why does it bother you? And how do you figure they create anything out of thin air? They have to "reserve" a portion of their deposits, they can loan out the rest. At interest.

If you don't want a bank to have your money, don't deposit it there. It you don't want to pay them interest, don't borrow their money. Pretty simple.

[dollarbull]

Borrowing and lending (or lending your own capital) isn't evil.

From previous discussions, I know that you know how fractional reserve lending works - i.e. that the banking system creates money out of thin air and then lends it out to "earn" interest. By creating credit and then charging interest on it, they are extracting wealth from society in the exact same way that a counterfeiter would. The injected credit also has the side effect of fooling entrepreneurs into thinking there are more savings available than there really are. This generates malinvestment - i.e. boom and bust.

If you don't want a bank to have your money, don't deposit it there

A modern day example of the bank of amsterdam (100% reserve) would be goldmoney.com. You can hold $US, CAD, CHF, Euros, gold and silver there. There is no fractional reserve lending. That is where