Banking is dead, long live banking: An anonymous investment banker explains why the banking system is just big enough to fail, and will collapse soon, to be replaced by peer-to-peer networks.
It's not every day you sit down to interview two people speaking with one voice. Last week however, I found myself in that unusual position during an in-depth phone discussion with “Jonathan Macmillan”, a pseudonym employed by two anonymous Swiss banking experts who published a radical critique of the current global financial system late last year called The End of Banking.
Both have drawn on decades of experience analyzing and working in the financial services industry to inform their polemic, contending that our banking system is fundamentally unstable, inefficient and unlikely to survive for much longer. The book articulates the broad outline of a completely different, totally algorithmic financial system that its authors believe has the power to make banking, as we know it, a relic of the past. Our discussion ranged from the history of banking and the Great Depression to the most recent financial crisis in 2008, while also sketching out what an alternative system might look like. –Charles Reinhardt (Hopes&Fears)
Phenomenal read. A very short interview, but a really good one as well. Definitely added the book (The End of Banking) to my reading list.
Will have to read it before I can decide whether I'm convinced by their argument(s), but I've been pretty convinced by the interview already.