6 ms·

I don't understand why FedNow and CBDC are such a big issue in the US. FedNow looks quite attractive from a fees perspective, especially when compared to PayPal

by tjpnz 3y ago

I don't understand why FedNow and CBDC are such a big issue in the US. FedNow looks quite attractive from a fees perspective, especially when compared to PayPal and alike. Part of me wonders if the middlemen who stand to lose out might be trying to muddy the waters. It wouldn't be the first time.

lbotos 3y ago
Because there are many Americans who are small gov and against excessive taxation. A CBDC is "too far" for a lot of people who believe that.
- bluescrn 3y ago
  Imagine being paid in a ‘programmable’ currency that your employer (or government) decides cannot be spent on alcohol, meat, or fossil fuels. Meanwhile, wealthier people get paid in ‘unrestricted’ currency.
  - candiddevmike 3y ago
    That already exists today, food stamps/SNAP/EBT for low income and dollars for everyone else I'd just as soon give everyone dollars via UBI
    - imtringued 3y ago
      Honestly, if governments paid out all social benefits in a demurrage currency which they accept for tax payments, they would save a lot of money because the velocity and therefore fiscal multiplier of a demurrage currency is very high. Christian Gelleri made this proposal to solve the Greek crisis: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3144910 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3144910
    - realce 3y ago
      Your employer doesn't pay you in food stamps, they pay you in money you can use to buy anything you need in the entire world. The government provides coupons that allow you to buy food which is remediated to the seller in dollars. The authority and funding to provide that service is something that voters can impact or change. These are very different things, not "that already exists" at all.
      - digging 3y ago
        > they pay you in money you can use to buy anything you need in the entire world. This is an primarily American phenomenon though and it's only really true because of the dominance of the US and US petrodollars over global society. It's probably not easy to spend Turkish lira in Madagascar, for example. Yes there are banks which will exchange approved currencies, but that's one step removed from being paid in a global global currency as you imply.
        astrange 3y ago
        "Petrodollars" are completely unimportant. They just mean Saudi Arabia's financial reserves, and KSA is not a large country so it wouldn't matter if they abandoned the dollar. It already doesn't matter that we stopped Russia from trading in dollars. If anyone ever mentions petrodollars, CBDC, or crypto to you, they are crazy and I recommend stealing their wallet. (Since they're into crypto they're used to it.)
        cmrdporcupine 3y ago
        The populist right's obsession with currency -- pointing fingers at state banks and currency systems and money lenders and so on -- is a product of their unwillingness to point fingers at real corporate sources of power & control in the world. In large part because they're sympathetic to them (or outright funded by them in some cases.) At best this kind of stuff is a harmless ideological pressure release valve for a discontented middle class / small business / entrepreneurial layer squeezed from above (esp after COVID). At worst it veers into outright authoritarian & xenophobic politics and often blends in some anti-Semitism. Starts with rants about Bretton-Woods and the next thing you know you're hearing about the Rothschilds. There was a whole wing of this stuff ascendant in the 1930s (in western Canada we had "Social Credit", for example) whose ideological purpose was to displace left wing populism and anti-capitalist politics with an explicitly pro-capitalist highly social conservative narrative which pinned blame for problems on "international banking" and, ultimately, Jewish people. The latest flavour is obsessed with talk about "petrodollars" and cryptocurrency, and then you scratch a little and there's the face of Sergei Lavrov or Marie Le Pen hiding under the paint. The world is f*cked and unjust but not for the reasons that these people go on about.
    - maerF0x0 3y ago
      afaik food stamps/SNAP/EBT is a charitable thing though, right? ie, the recipients are not trading labor for it, right?
      - maerF0x0 3y ago
        cannot edit, but would like to say I actually prefer we give out UBI, in a tracked manner, as well. "cash" they can spend on anything, but with data collection so we can do society improving retrospectives on how it was spent.
  - hrdwdmrbl 3y ago
    A CBDC does not necessarily need to be implemented with that capability.
    - bluescrn 3y ago
      No, but big centralized power tends to crave ever more power, control, and surveillance
  - Spivak 3y ago
    I mean if we're talking that level of societal breakdown they would just use the system we already have for tracking semi-restricted purchases which is scanning and reporting your government ID. Then you can enforce meat and fossil fuel rations with no way to buy yourself around it.
  - ke88y 3y ago
    I view this type of thinking as the conspiratorially minded's version of "trying to solve social problems with technical solutions". If there were political motive and will to implement such a system, it could be done without a CBDC and certainly without modernization of ACH (heh). Conversely, if there's not political motive and will, then the presence of a CBDC doesn't change that fact.
  - treyd 3y ago
    Why would they want to do that? How would either your employer or the fed have the grounds to justify doing that?
    - hellojesus 3y ago
      Look at what happened with the Canadian protests and banking restrictions. Many are concerned that cdbc will allow the gov to create carbon rations that are enforced by disallowing purchases. Cash is fungible while regulated digital currency isn't.
      - treyd 3y ago
        But how could something like a carbon ration possibly be implemented? They'd have to retrofit every PoS system in the nation to classify sales and tag payments with that information. This would already be possible using the existing settlement infrastructure, nothing unique to how a CBDC would work. Plus, if the goal is to limit carbon emissioms, it's more of a liberal market-shaping attitude that mainstream economists have to simply tax carbon heavy activities rather than invent new and unpopular technological measures to force it to happen. Same applies to the fears about limiting meat consumption, etc.
    - johnny22 3y ago
      it's what they do with foodstamps already, is the point. I don't know whether that'll atually happen, but that's the theory.
    - bluescrn 3y ago
      Something along the lines of ‘We face a climate emergency that is even more serious than the Covid emergency, we have to do this, this is about saving lives’? (I’m not in any way a climate denier, just a huge pessimist when it comes to attempted solutions)
  - zirgs 3y ago
    Payment processors like VISA can already block payments that they don't like. Even if they are completely legal.
- Mistletoe 3y ago
  You are already starting to pigeonhole people with your stereotype. I'm as liberal as they come and I find the thought of a CBDC to be an unimaginable Orwellian nightmare. A boot stamping on the face of civil liberties and privacy forever.
  - kvetching 3y ago
    Maybe if our democracy wasn't broken this wouldn't be an issue. The government is supposed to be ran by us, but it's been taken over by bureaucrat cosmopolitans & multi-national corps who have a distinct will to power.
chaostheory 3y ago
Supposedly, it's because of more centralized surveillance and control. https://medium.com/beyondmoney/the-good-bad-and-ugly-of-cbdc-ed4ea4bd0443 https://medium.com/beyondmoney/the-good-bad-and-ugly-of-cbdc... https://medium.com/illumination/how-the-central-banks-digital-currency-cbdc-could-track-your-spending-habit-dfcde0d6fac0 https://medium.com/illumination/how-the-central-banks-digita...
dboreham 3y ago
The same thing happens when a town decides to string fiber on their utility poles and sell transit. All sorts of reasons why that's a terrible thing. Same for importing drugs from other countries. And on and on.
- ke88y 3y ago
  The ISP duopoly/monopoly is worse from a consumer perspective and functionally equivalent from a civil rights perspective. To think otherwise is naive. In fact, the private sector solution is perhaps even worse from a civil rights perspective. Consider a prosecutor in Jurisdiction A hell-bent on violating the civil rights of a citizen in Jurisdiction B, and suppose Jurisdiction B is sympathetic to this citizen. This isn't even hypothetical in the USA. Abortion, immigration, civil disobedience, etc. In the corporate duopoly setup, Jurisdiction A can compel the ISP to comply -- either by physically entering the property of the ISP and taking data by force, or by threatening market access. In the muni ISP case, Jurisdiction B says "shove it". And that's before noting that corporations such as modern ISPs are -- like governments -- also large bureaucracies endowed with incredible power that are de facto impossible to opt out of. Except at least in representative government you have some sort of voice, however small, which isn't dependent on amassing vast sums of cash.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  > a town decides to string fiber on their utility poles and sell transit I dream of the day my municipality does this. The idea of buying service from whoever I want rather than be forced to use Comcast... -swoon-
- oblio 3y ago
  > The same thing happens when a town decides to string fiber on their utility poles and sell transit. All sorts of reasons why that's a terrible thing. Why is it horrible?
CameronNemo 3y ago
Two points of context: * the Biden administration is planning to monitor smaller denomination transactions (in an inflationary environment!) * IRS resources historically and presently target low-income, low-wealth households/individuals for audits https://www.cnbc.com/select/irs-600-reporting-rule-delayed/ https://www.cnbc.com/select/irs-600-reporting-rule-delayed/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/irs-audit-eitc-five-times-as-likely-to-get-audited/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/irs-audit-eitc-five-times-as-li...
- jonhohle 3y ago
  What benefit would targeting low wealth individuals have to the IRS? I worked on a state tax system briefly at Accenture and they offered the product for a percentage of reclaimed taxes. They started with high debts with good credit scores. Since they had skin in the game (which it could be argued the IRS doesn’t), they wanted to maximize the unpaid taxes they collected.
  - genmud 3y ago
    Because wealthier people have more complicated returns and are much more likely to litigate, resulting in more time commitment. For high net wealth audits, you could have potentially dozens of people working on it for years so there is a possibility that a judge / jury rules in your favor. They are going after low effort people, but making it up by volume.
  - CameronNemo 3y ago
    Tax collectors have traditionally extracted from low wealth individuals to enrich wealthy individuals. I'll let you figure out why.
  - DANmode 3y ago
    > What benefit would targeting low wealth individuals have to the IRS? I'll shorten the explanation even further: many more easy/no contest wins.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    > What benefit would targeting low wealth individuals have to the IRS? Wrong question. The correct question is: What benefit would the IRS targetting low wealth individuals have to high wealth individuals?
hitpointdrew 3y ago
> I don't understand why ~FedNow and CBDC~ BIG BROTHER are such a big issue in the US. Fixed this for you. I don't really want a gigantic federal agency having insight into every financial transaction I make. Hard, fucking, pass.
- chimeracoder 3y ago
  > I don't really want a gigantic federal agency having insight into every financial transaction I make. Hard, fucking, pass. If that's the case, I have bad news for you about the banking system of literally every developed country.
  - bboygravity 3y ago
    Ever heard of cash? I can buy an icecream anywhere in the world without anybody tracking me. Even with the "wrong" political opinion (even if I would be a trucker in Canada during certain protests). I cannot do that with CBDC. No. CBDC (aka: the ultimate totalitarian's dream) is not the same as the current banking system, despite the current banking system also being very horrible for privacy. * All of the above assuming that cash will be banned and CBDC will be mandatory for everybody.
    - NamTaf 3y ago
      That's a very load-bearing assumption.
      - hellojesus 3y ago
        Not as load bearing when you look at the legal limits of cash transactions in countries in Europe. Also not so load bearing when you consider the unconstitutional civil asset forfeiture of the current US.
    - ke88y 3y ago
      > I can buy an icecream anywhere in the world without anybody tracking me. No you can't. Companies like OpenEye and Deep Sentinel offer facial recognition solutions that are targeted at loss-prevention, and these systems are commonplace in the USA. Facial recognition-based consumer analytics systems are also available. In fact, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a pint of ice cream that you can buy without having a camera pointed at your face. Even the little stand at the beach in the state park near my old place had a camera, and I didn't even have real LTE coverage there. Privacy comes only from the force of law; not the other way around. Anyways, the whole conversation is a red herring. This is a replacement for ACH, which already exists, and there isn't substantively more information sharing between banks and governments than already exists.
danielmarkbruce 3y ago
FedNow isn't a big issue. CBDC really isn't a big issue either, because it almost certainly won't happen. Americans are very unlikely to want a system like that.
- atentaten 3y ago
  Americans didn't want a central bank, but look at where we are. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
  - danielmarkbruce 3y ago
    The "central bank" americans fought hard against in the first place didn't have the same function as the modern central bank started last century.
flagrant_taco 3y ago
Many of the arguments revolve around concerns that the government will gain too much control, power, and personal information. It the government directly controls financial transactions they know every transaction we make, and more importantly can deny transactions they don't like. Arguably the US government effectively has these powers today, but beingtthat they don't directly own our banks there is a level of red tape they have to go through. As long as they are technically separate there is also the opportunity for us to change the laws and strip them of that access, once combined we give up that possibility. The US was originally design with a very strong distrust of our own federal government. For the last 80 years we've completely flipped the script and given more and more power to a massive federal government, but the undertone of distrust is still around for quite a few Americans.

by tjpnz 3y ago

lbotos 3y ago

Because there are many Americans who are small gov and against excessive taxation. A CBDC is "too far" for a lot of people who believe that.

bluescrn 3y ago
Imagine being paid in a ‘programmable’ currency that your employer (or government) decides cannot be spent on alcohol, meat, or fossil fuels. Meanwhile, wealthier people get paid in ‘unrestricted’ currency.
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  That already exists today, food stamps/SNAP/EBT for low income and dollars for everyone else I'd just as soon give everyone dollars via UBI
  - imtringued 3y ago
    Honestly, if governments paid out all social benefits in a demurrage currency which they accept for tax payments, they would save a lot of money because the velocity and therefore fiscal multiplier of a demurrage currency is very high. Christian Gelleri made this proposal to solve the Greek crisis: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3144910 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3144910
  - realce 3y ago
    Your employer doesn't pay you in food stamps, they pay you in money you can use to buy anything you need in the entire world. The government provides coupons that allow you to buy food which is remediated to the seller in dollars. The authority and funding to provide that service is something that voters can impact or change. These are very different things, not "that already exists" at all.
    - digging 3y ago
      > they pay you in money you can use to buy anything you need in the entire world. This is an primarily American phenomenon though and it's only really true because of the dominance of the US and US petrodollars over global society. It's probably not easy to spend Turkish lira in Madagascar, for example. Yes there are banks which will exchange approved currencies, but that's one step removed from being paid in a global global currency as you imply.
      - astrange 3y ago
        "Petrodollars" are completely unimportant. They just mean Saudi Arabia's financial reserves, and KSA is not a large country so it wouldn't matter if they abandoned the dollar. It already doesn't matter that we stopped Russia from trading in dollars. If anyone ever mentions petrodollars, CBDC, or crypto to you, they are crazy and I recommend stealing their wallet. (Since they're into crypto they're used to it.)
        cmrdporcupine 3y ago
        The populist right's obsession with currency -- pointing fingers at state banks and currency systems and money lenders and so on -- is a product of their unwillingness to point fingers at real corporate sources of power & control in the world. In large part because they're sympathetic to them (or outright funded by them in some cases.) At best this kind of stuff is a harmless ideological pressure release valve for a discontented middle class / small business / entrepreneurial layer squeezed from above (esp after COVID). At worst it veers into outright authoritarian & xenophobic politics and often blends in some anti-Semitism. Starts with rants about Bretton-Woods and the next thing you know you're hearing about the Rothschilds. There was a whole wing of this stuff ascendant in the 1930s (in western Canada we had "Social Credit", for example) whose ideological purpose was to displace left wing populism and anti-capitalist politics with an explicitly pro-capitalist highly social conservative narrative which pinned blame for problems on "international banking" and, ultimately, Jewish people. The latest flavour is obsessed with talk about "petrodollars" and cryptocurrency, and then you scratch a little and there's the face of Sergei Lavrov or Marie Le Pen hiding under the paint. The world is f*cked and unjust but not for the reasons that these people go on about.
  - maerF0x0 3y ago
    afaik food stamps/SNAP/EBT is a charitable thing though, right? ie, the recipients are not trading labor for it, right?
    - maerF0x0 3y ago
      cannot edit, but would like to say I actually prefer we give out UBI, in a tracked manner, as well. "cash" they can spend on anything, but with data collection so we can do society improving retrospectives on how it was spent.
- hrdwdmrbl 3y ago
  A CBDC does not necessarily need to be implemented with that capability.
  - bluescrn 3y ago
    No, but big centralized power tends to crave ever more power, control, and surveillance
- Spivak 3y ago
  I mean if we're talking that level of societal breakdown they would just use the system we already have for tracking semi-restricted purchases which is scanning and reporting your government ID. Then you can enforce meat and fossil fuel rations with no way to buy yourself around it.
- ke88y 3y ago
  I view this type of thinking as the conspiratorially minded's version of "trying to solve social problems with technical solutions". If there were political motive and will to implement such a system, it could be done without a CBDC and certainly without modernization of ACH (heh). Conversely, if there's not political motive and will, then the presence of a CBDC doesn't change that fact.
- treyd 3y ago
  Why would they want to do that? How would either your employer or the fed have the grounds to justify doing that?
  - hellojesus 3y ago
    Look at what happened with the Canadian protests and banking restrictions. Many are concerned that cdbc will allow the gov to create carbon rations that are enforced by disallowing purchases. Cash is fungible while regulated digital currency isn't.
    - treyd 3y ago
      But how could something like a carbon ration possibly be implemented? They'd have to retrofit every PoS system in the nation to classify sales and tag payments with that information. This would already be possible using the existing settlement infrastructure, nothing unique to how a CBDC would work. Plus, if the goal is to limit carbon emissioms, it's more of a liberal market-shaping attitude that mainstream economists have to simply tax carbon heavy activities rather than invent new and unpopular technological measures to force it to happen. Same applies to the fears about limiting meat consumption, etc.
  - johnny22 3y ago
    it's what they do with foodstamps already, is the point. I don't know whether that'll atually happen, but that's the theory.
  - bluescrn 3y ago
    Something along the lines of ‘We face a climate emergency that is even more serious than the Covid emergency, we have to do this, this is about saving lives’? (I’m not in any way a climate denier, just a huge pessimist when it comes to attempted solutions)
- zirgs 3y ago
  Payment processors like VISA can already block payments that they don't like. Even if they are completely legal.
Mistletoe 3y ago
You are already starting to pigeonhole people with your stereotype. I'm as liberal as they come and I find the thought of a CBDC to be an unimaginable Orwellian nightmare. A boot stamping on the face of civil liberties and privacy forever.
- kvetching 3y ago
  Maybe if our democracy wasn't broken this wouldn't be an issue. The government is supposed to be ran by us, but it's been taken over by bureaucrat cosmopolitans & multi-national corps who have a distinct will to power.

chaostheory 3y ago

Supposedly, it's because of more centralized surveillance and control. https://medium.com/beyondmoney/the-good-bad-and-ugly-of-cbdc-ed4ea4bd0443 https://medium.com/beyondmoney/the-good-bad-and-ugly-of-cbdc... https://medium.com/illumination/how-the-central-banks-digital-currency-cbdc-could-track-your-spending-habit-dfcde0d6fac0 https://medium.com/illumination/how-the-central-banks-digita...

dboreham 3y ago

The same thing happens when a town decides to string fiber on their utility poles and sell transit. All sorts of reasons why that's a terrible thing. Same for importing drugs from other countries. And on and on.

ke88y 3y ago
The ISP duopoly/monopoly is worse from a consumer perspective and functionally equivalent from a civil rights perspective. To think otherwise is naive. In fact, the private sector solution is perhaps even worse from a civil rights perspective. Consider a prosecutor in Jurisdiction A hell-bent on violating the civil rights of a citizen in Jurisdiction B, and suppose Jurisdiction B is sympathetic to this citizen. This isn't even hypothetical in the USA. Abortion, immigration, civil disobedience, etc. In the corporate duopoly setup, Jurisdiction A can compel the ISP to comply -- either by physically entering the property of the ISP and taking data by force, or by threatening market access. In the muni ISP case, Jurisdiction B says "shove it". And that's before noting that corporations such as modern ISPs are -- like governments -- also large bureaucracies endowed with incredible power that are de facto impossible to opt out of. Except at least in representative government you have some sort of voice, however small, which isn't dependent on amassing vast sums of cash.
rootusrootus 3y ago
> a town decides to string fiber on their utility poles and sell transit I dream of the day my municipality does this. The idea of buying service from whoever I want rather than be forced to use Comcast... -swoon-
oblio 3y ago
> The same thing happens when a town decides to string fiber on their utility poles and sell transit. All sorts of reasons why that's a terrible thing. Why is it horrible?

CameronNemo 3y ago

Two points of context: * the Biden administration is planning to monitor smaller denomination transactions (in an inflationary environment!) * IRS resources historically and presently target low-income, low-wealth households/individuals for audits https://www.cnbc.com/select/irs-600-reporting-rule-delayed/ https://www.cnbc.com/select/irs-600-reporting-rule-delayed/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/irs-audit-eitc-five-times-as-likely-to-get-audited/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/irs-audit-eitc-five-times-as-li...

jonhohle 3y ago
What benefit would targeting low wealth individuals have to the IRS? I worked on a state tax system briefly at Accenture and they offered the product for a percentage of reclaimed taxes. They started with high debts with good credit scores. Since they had skin in the game (which it could be argued the IRS doesn’t), they wanted to maximize the unpaid taxes they collected.
- genmud 3y ago
  Because wealthier people have more complicated returns and are much more likely to litigate, resulting in more time commitment. For high net wealth audits, you could have potentially dozens of people working on it for years so there is a possibility that a judge / jury rules in your favor. They are going after low effort people, but making it up by volume.
- CameronNemo 3y ago
  Tax collectors have traditionally extracted from low wealth individuals to enrich wealthy individuals. I'll let you figure out why.
- DANmode 3y ago
  > What benefit would targeting low wealth individuals have to the IRS? I'll shorten the explanation even further: many more easy/no contest wins.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  > What benefit would targeting low wealth individuals have to the IRS? Wrong question. The correct question is: What benefit would the IRS targetting low wealth individuals have to high wealth individuals?

hitpointdrew 3y ago

> I don't understand why ~FedNow and CBDC~ BIG BROTHER are such a big issue in the US. Fixed this for you. I don't really want a gigantic federal agency having insight into every financial transaction I make. Hard, fucking, pass.

chimeracoder 3y ago
> I don't really want a gigantic federal agency having insight into every financial transaction I make. Hard, fucking, pass. If that's the case, I have bad news for you about the banking system of literally every developed country.
- bboygravity 3y ago
  Ever heard of cash? I can buy an icecream anywhere in the world without anybody tracking me. Even with the "wrong" political opinion (even if I would be a trucker in Canada during certain protests). I cannot do that with CBDC. No. CBDC (aka: the ultimate totalitarian's dream) is not the same as the current banking system, despite the current banking system also being very horrible for privacy. * All of the above assuming that cash will be banned and CBDC will be mandatory for everybody.
  - NamTaf 3y ago
    That's a very load-bearing assumption.
    - hellojesus 3y ago
      Not as load bearing when you look at the legal limits of cash transactions in countries in Europe. Also not so load bearing when you consider the unconstitutional civil asset forfeiture of the current US.
  - ke88y 3y ago
    > I can buy an icecream anywhere in the world without anybody tracking me. No you can't. Companies like OpenEye and Deep Sentinel offer facial recognition solutions that are targeted at loss-prevention, and these systems are commonplace in the USA. Facial recognition-based consumer analytics systems are also available. In fact, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a pint of ice cream that you can buy without having a camera pointed at your face. Even the little stand at the beach in the state park near my old place had a camera, and I didn't even have real LTE coverage there. Privacy comes only from the force of law; not the other way around. Anyways, the whole conversation is a red herring. This is a replacement for ACH, which already exists, and there isn't substantively more information sharing between banks and governments than already exists.

danielmarkbruce 3y ago

FedNow isn't a big issue. CBDC really isn't a big issue either, because it almost certainly won't happen. Americans are very unlikely to want a system like that.

atentaten 3y ago
Americans didn't want a central bank, but look at where we are. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
- danielmarkbruce 3y ago
  The "central bank" americans fought hard against in the first place didn't have the same function as the modern central bank started last century.

flagrant_taco 3y ago

Many of the arguments revolve around concerns that the government will gain too much control, power, and personal information. It the government directly controls financial transactions they know every transaction we make, and more importantly can deny transactions they don't like. Arguably the US government effectively has these powers today, but beingtthat they don't directly own our banks there is a level of red tape they have to go through. As long as they are technically separate there is also the opportunity for us to change the laws and strip them of that access, once combined we give up that possibility. The US was originally design with a very strong distrust of our own federal government. For the last 80 years we've completely flipped the script and given more and more power to a massive federal government, but the undertone of distrust is still around for quite a few Americans.