part of me thinks they'd better go the traditional bank route and just directly lend the money to companies/people (somehow it's also an active investment). The

part of me thinks they'd better go the traditional bank route and just directly lend the money to companies/people (somehow it's also an active investment). They could tell their customer: "we financed this bridge, we financed this company, we financed this farmer's crop" and when there is a loss, they could explain that the company failed or the bridge could not get off the ground for some reason or the weather was bad for the crop. I don't think the current level of indirection is useful, and I don't think computer shakes the hand of the customer saying "let's build this road".