I’m uber weak on the idea, but I am attracted to the notion of ‘free banking’. If you want to bank at a fractional reserve bank, go right ahead. Bank at a bank with one to ten, one to a hundred reserves.
Why is that a public problem?
Money is too important, too personal to be in government hands.
If the American people ever allow the banks to control issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers occupied. Thomas Jefferson
Fake Jefferson quote!
Aside from my explanation of why it is fraudulent above, it is the major cause of the boom/bust cycle we experience.
If you look back to the banking panics of the 1800s, most were created by the local banks practice of frb. By artificially increasing the money supply, it generates inflation and sends a message of a more powerful economy than really exists. This leads to mal-investment (the over-capacity that we see today) and inevitably ends in deflation. It is no co-incidence that the 30s depression was preceded by "The Roaring Twenties" and our current situation was similarly strong during the 90s.