Life Dream Banks
posted by on October 9 at 12:59 PM
By the look of things (and if this is indeed the case, it would make a lot of sense), the only institutions celebrating Columbus Day are banks.
Here’s a quick note: In Columbus’s time, the whole function of a bank was to hold and protect large amounts of gold. Now that the gold is gone, and paper notes—which once promised this or that bank has a hold of your gold—are becoming nothing more than magnetic traces in computers, what do banks in our world actually hold? The answer will certainly be found in Pascal’s insight that there is no difference between an ordinary man who, night after night after night, dreams that he is a king and a man who, day after day after day, is an actual king.
Except in Canada, where it is called "Thanksgiving."
Don't forget the U.S. Postal Service.
I didn't even know it was Columbus Day.
my office is celebrating. of course, i'm still here. but no one else is.
Banks actually are required to hold a certain amount of cash, generally 10% of assets. Each day, as they receive or give out cash, they're required to report to the feds how much cash they've got, and if they fall below that 10%, they're required to borrow at a low interest rate from the feds to make up the difference.
Not to put words into Mr. Mudede's mouth, but I THINK what he's getting at is: what intrinsic value does currency actually have in this age of Electronic Transactions?
Precious metals have value because of their rarity and (somewhat) because of their portability; same goes for precious stones. Promisory notes were just that, a note that promised the bearer could exchange it for a precious commodity of equivalent value. But modern currency only has the value assigned to it by a rather arbitrary process; we can exchange so many pieces of paper with certain words and numbers printed on them for goods and services, but the paper itself has little intrinsic value.
The fact that, as Gitai points out, banks aren't even required to store 100% of the deposited assets of its customers merely points to paper currency's intrinsic worthlessness. It seems more like it's now (as Charles alluded) all about little electronic pulses stored on the hard drives that keep track of tens of billions of transactions each day (from your paycheck being automatically deposited into your checking account, to the debit card purchase you make at the grocery store withdrawn from your account, etc.)
That's where the "value" is nowadays, not so much any more in the little pieces of paper with pictures of dead presidents we carry around in our wallets.
Benjamin Franklin wasn't even a president. Neither was Sam Chase, whose picture is on my favorite note (the $10,000 one).
Two things:
1. Canadian Thanksgiving is a month early, but not a month and a half early. It's not as big a holiday as here - they save the two days off for Christmas and Boxing Day and you only get one day for Thanksgiving, since you only travel to eat with relatives nearby there.
2. Not a state holiday, so everyone's working today.
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