[hpkuarg]

Only tangentially related, but let's not fall into the fallacy of the middleman -- middlemen are only bad if they are legally or otherwise monopolistically required to be there. In other situations, they add value in the connecting of producers and consumers.

[andrepd]

What value or service are they providing, and which "producers" and "consumers" are they connecting? In fact, they do have a monopoly wrt. their customers: they can credit themselves assets by creating a matching liability – inside the confines of regulatory limits – while ordinary people and businesses can't, and thus they have to pay the bank a fee to do that for them and give them the money.

[taneq]

You mean like banks are? I don’t think I can call up the national reserve bank and get a loan to buy a house.

[lottin]

Central banks are not in the business of banking.