Thanks for the engaging discussion _delirium, its one of the best (well-mannered) I have had on HN in some time. As far as full reserve banking goes, I think t

Thanks for the engaging discussion _delirium, its one of the best (well-mannered) I have had on HN in some time. As far as full reserve banking goes, I think that it is all too easy to forget what bank products were actually intended for and how they are used now. For instance, a bank could in theory offer full-reserve banking without charging a fee to its customers by utilizing age-old banking products: The fixed term Certificate of Deposit (CD) and the Savings account. If you wanted to invest your savings into something that would draw interest, you would use a CD, and the bank would be able to lend out that money for the designated length of maturity of the CD. Yea, mortgage interest rates wouldn't be 4%, but the proliferation of Buy now, pay later attitudes would decrease also. If you didn't want to tie up your money for a fixed length of time, you could put it into a savings account. No way, other than by transferring to another account could you get money from this account. The bank could use this for shorter-term liquid investments (treasuries, whatever). Checking accounts and accounts with access to credit / debit cards would require a fee and the bank could not lend out those funds, as they are held in full-reserve. Ta-da, full reserve banking (not sure how Rothbard would have felt about the savings account thing). Way off-topic from the OP, but a great debate non-the-less.