Comments by "EebstertheGreat" (@EebstertheGreat) on "Money’s Mostly Digital, So Why Is Moving It So Hard?" video.

  1. That's true in the eurozone. It isn't true throughout Europe generally.
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  2. It depends what country you send it to and how you send it. The $40+ fee is typical for wire transfers and ACH transfers. If you are using a service like Wise, then as he said, it will be cheaper. If you are sending to another country in a monetary union, like from one eurozone country to another, it will be much cheaper. If you use a service like Western Union, then it will depend on distance and many other factors. Some cases can be very cheap, like sending money from the U.S. to Mexico through Walmart. But these aren't bank transfers, so it's really not the same thing. You have to trust Walmart with your money.
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  3. It's not fraud at all. Banks publish statements of their total deposits and reserves. They aren't lying to anybody. And your deposit is insured anyway. You can of course start your own bank; people do it all the time. And the vast majority of deposit banks keep a fractional reserve. So no, you won't get prosecuted for starting a bank, any more than the thousands of other people who started banks.
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  4.  @richdobbs6595  It's not illegal for banks to fail. While I have my own reservations about bank bailouts, that's totally separate from the FDIC. The FDIC insures your deposits directly. If the bank fails, which banks sometimes do (usually small banks), the federal government will cover your deposits. That is not "socializing the risk," because deposit banks are required by law to pay FDIC premiums. It's actually a (very small) source of revenue for the federal government. The FDIC gets no appropriations from Congress. Obviously starting a bank requires a lot of capital. It's a bank. That's probably the one thing everyone knows a bank needs. These federal rules are not there to screw consumers but to protect them and to protect the FDIC. And it's not "most" banks that lend out a fraction of deposits. EVERY bank that has deposits lends out most of that money, because that's the entire business model. It's not fraud, it's a cornerstone of the financial market. Working in a way you personally don't understand isn't "fraud." Banks work exactly the way they say they work, and are required to work, and have worked for millennia. Declaring it to be "fraud" doesn't make it so.
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  5. Banks do not print currency. It doesn't work anything like that. Physical currency is created by the Treasury. The bank makes money only by lending it out and collecting interest. It is getting paid for increasing liquidity. Without banks, there would be no lending, and thus people would only be able to start businesses if they were already wealthy. That's not an improvement.
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