I was being facetious and flippant with tongue in cheek, which I should not be that way. It is unbecoming and I apologize.

I don't have anything against community banks. Most of those people (there are exceptions in every profession though, including farming) are honest hard working individuals trying like every one else to make a good living for themselves and their families. I think there might be a better alternative to fractional reserve banking although I probably will never see it in my lifetime and any community bank is only playing by the rules they are given just like I do as a farmer when I use the programs available to me in which I also don't agree are the best ideas. We play by the rules we are given and do what we can through the legislative process and expressing our opinions to get the rules changed to something we hope is better.

We need banks and bankers and I use them regularly. Doesn't mean I don't think we should have a better system. I also believe in sound money and it encourages me when I hear bankers that agree with that ideal.

I appreciate your input on this forum. You pointed out to me some time back that banks are usually limited by capital and not reserves. I knew that once I thought about it a little, but had been making some statements that were incorrect because of lack of thought on my part or at least using incorrect terminology. Please take me to task when I say something incorrect.

I think the banking industry is a big problem right now. What I am concerned with is not community banks, which mostly practice traditional banking services, but the too big to fail banks that are in reality to a large extent hedge funds making highly speculative and leveraged bets while flying under the protection of the taxpayer and the label of being a bank when the activities they peruse should be separated out into investment banking with investor money at risk. They should not have the once implicit and now explicit backing of the government which is in reality you and I and all the rest of the citizenry. My problem has never been with local banking or probably even with the traditional lending that the big banks do. It is with what has happened to banking since the repeal of Glass Steagall when investment banks could combine with deposit banks.

I may often denigrate "banks and banking" but it is not traditional deposit banking functions that community banks and credit unions provide or banking services like those provided by Farm Credit that I am talking about. I often fail to point this out and so it might be easy for someone like yourself to take offense when in reality I'm not referring to the services your provide. 

I also think there might be a better system than fractional reserve which I believe lends to the boom/bust cycle of credit expansion in boom times then contraction during the resulting bust. But that is a separate issue from what I consider has been the fraud foisted on us by the TBTF banks and their captured crony legislators owned by the lobbyists. The big banks need to be separated into deposit banks which do traditional banking and investment banks that be allowed to fail if their bets go bad.

If I offended you, I am sorry. I value your input to this forum.

John