Fractional Reserve Banking - named!

[marian farrell]

Positive Money

 

On Tuesday evening, a major step forward was made for this campaign. Robert Peston, the famous BBC presenter on everything to do with finance, actually used the words 'fractional reserve banking' on national television!

Fractional wotsit?

That's the system that the banks used to create £1.2 trillion of 'funny money' over the last ten years.

It's the system that is so unstable that taxpayers have to prop it up with a subsidy worth £100bn a year (according to the Bank of England).

It's the system that has buried ordinary people under a mountain of debt, and which caused the crisis we're all paying for now.

It's so poorly understood that in all the millions of words of coverage of the financial crisis, not more than about 5 mainstream journalists actually figured out the root cause.

And now Robert Peston's talking about it on national television. Finally!  

The program is well worth watching, getting as close to hitting the nail on the head as anything we've seen so far. You can watch this documentary on BBC Iplayer until Tuesday 25th January here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00xwsl5/Britains_Banks_Too_Bi...

Note the contributions from Toby Baxendale, chairman of the Cobden Centre, who also spoke at the Positive Money student conference. (And ignore Paul Tucker's suggestion that we need fractional reserve banking to allow people to borrow for the long term - that's a naive misunderstanding for the second in command at the Bank of England.)

After you've watched it, please leave your thoughts and discuss on the Positive Money blog.

Ben Dyson of Positive Money