Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by George Ford Smith
“Willie Sutton reportedly said he robbed banks because that’s where the money was. Willie would’ve made a good politician. Governments became friends with banks for the same reason Willie robbed them. If a sufficiently important bank issued more receipts for money than it had locked up in its vaults, people would get suspicious and start to pull their money out. The monetary contagion could spread to other banks, and government, which kept its loot in banks, would be in trouble. Using its status as an agency of coercion, government intervened to stop the redemption while keeping the banks in business.” (10/26/26)