Civil Discourse. This Podcast Will Use Government Documents To
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Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor. Nia Rodgers: Hey, Aughie. John Aughenbaugh: Morning, Nia. How are you? Nia Rodgers: I'm good. How are you? John Aughenbaugh: I'm doing fine. Another lovely spring day in The Greater Richmond area. Nia Rodgers: I was going to say in the RVA. John Aughenbaugh: Yes. Nia Rodgers: We're doing our commission series and I think there's a thing we cannot leave out and that is money. The Benjamin's. Monetary policy. John Aughenbaugh: The Jack, the coin, the dinero. Nia Rodgers: Exactly, the bitcoin now. Apparently that's the hot thing. Everybody keeps saying, "Are you going to invest in bitcoin?" I was like, "I can't afford to invest in bitcoin." Apparently, a bitcoin cost you 80 million dollars or something? I don't know. John Aughenbaugh: Yeah. I get asked that question. Nia Rodgers: You know I work for the public, right? John Aughenbaugh: [inaudible] One, I work for the government, and two, I struggle to go ahead and keep current with my IRA, my individual retirement account, right? They're asking me to go ahead and spend valuable intellectual capital on a currency that, one, I'm not entirely sure what it is. Nia Rodgers: Exactly. How it works. I don't really understand it because I barely understand fiat currency as it currently exists. Let alone the Elon Musk pretend currency that is big, it's not pretend actually, now there was an open IP and a marketing staff. Good for them, I'd say. John Aughenbaugh: I still occasionally rue the day that we don't have a legal tender in our pocket books and wallets. There was something tangible and reassuring about being able to look into my wallet and see, a couple $10 bills. But now I have cards. I have plastic. Nia Rodgers: Now when you give people cash, sometimes they'd look at you like they don't know what to do. John Aughenbaugh: Yes. Nia Rodgers: You know what I mean? People who count the money back from the register get distressed because then they have to slowly count it into your hand to make sure they got the right amount. I get it. It's math and math is hard, and because so many people pay with plastic now, I imagine that cash is just a foreign object like, what am I doing with this thing? John Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Nia Rodgers: But women everywhere we'll hear me when I say I rue that there is no more mad money. What used to happen is that your mom, if you're mostly young women, I think maybe some young men, but mostly young women. You took a little bit of money back in your wallet and then if you didn't like him, if you're out on a date and he said something rude or obnoxious or you didn't like him or her, depending on who you're out on a date with, you could just get up and leave and the mad money was to pay for your cab ride home. John Aughenbaugh: How about this, if you reached into a coat pocket and you found a $20 bill. Nia Rodgers: Found money, yes, like magic. Oh my gosh, you wash your jeans and you've lost a $10 bill and it's all soft and spendable. You're like, "Thank you. The universe just gave me money." John Aughenbaugh: The rest of your day or your week could be terrible, but you're just like, that's all right. I found $20. Okay, I'm good. The rest of you all can go ahead and be a bunch of meanies. It doesn't matter. Nia Rodgers: Exactly. Banking, there's not one banking commission I think that we're going to talk about. There's three or four that we're going to talk about? John Aughenbaugh: Yes. Nia Rodgers: Because as far as I can tell, what happens and correct me if I'm wrong, is that it's a cyclical sort of thing, where there'll be a problem with money and banking and people will go, "This was terrible, somebody should look into that, " and there'll be a commission and they will look into it and then we'll go along for 20 or 30 years, and then there'll be another one of these and another commission. It just seems like it's a cycle where we're trying to actually figure out capitalism, and money, and banking and all that sort of stuff. John Aughenbaugh: If you think about it historically, Nia, banking has always been a fraught contentious issue in the United States. If you think about it. One of the first policy debates within our first presidential administration was between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson regarding whether or not the United States federal government had the authority and if it had the authority, should it create a national bank? Think about it. Nia Rodgers: Because Hamilton was the Secretary of the Treasury, right? John Aughenbaugh: That's right and Jefferson was Secretary of State. Hamilton proposed a national bank that would help the States pay off their debts to the British Crown because that was one of the negotiated points to end the Revolutionary War. British Crown was just like, "Okay, you guys beat us in this war. Nia Rodgers: But you still owe us money. John Aughenbaugh: You still owe us money because that was part of your charters, your contracts with the British Crown. We're not going to end this war unless you guys agree to pay your debts. Hamilton was like, "If we create a national bank, and the federal government collects revenue through the imposition of tariffs this will allow us to help the States pay off the debts. Jefferson was just like, "Hey, wait a minute here. Why do we need a national bank when each of the former colonies, now States have their own banking systems?" Nia Rodgers: Let them pay their own debts. John Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Hamilton was just like, "But banking can unify the country," and Jefferson was just like, "Yeah, but a national bank would be just as oppressive as the British Crown wanting us to go ahead and pay them money every year." Banking has always been contentious. We got a landmark Supreme Court decision, McCulloch versus Maryland, which was about States trying to tax the second iteration of the national bank. JOHN AUGHENBAUGH: This has been a contentious issue. We're going to talk about it in this podcast episode. Guys, as recently as the Great Recession of 2007-2009 was in part about the role of banks. The role of banks. You were correct in saying, ''Wow, we just can't seem to get a really good handle on banking in the American, if you will, version of democracy/capitalism.'' NIA RODGERS: Yeah, it's complicated. JOHN AUGHENBAUGH: Yes. NIA RODGERS: That's part of the problem, is that banking is complicated. I don't know about you, but I did not go back into the 1800's because there's only so much commission I can think about in terms of banking because we probably could have gone back to Egyptian times when they had banking. If we were so inclined, but we started in the 1900's because there was this panic of 1907, which were bank runs. We think of panics, I think at least I thought of it, as starting with the Great Depression. But there had actually been a series of them in the late 1800's and early 1900's, culminating right in the 1997 crazed panic. Basically, what happens in a panic is that people think that they're not going to be able to get their money. So they go to the bank to try to withdraw their money and so many people do that, that the bank either has to shut down or it has to regulate the amount it's going to give people or something else. It has to protect itself from being completely depleted. JOHN AUGHENBAUGH: Yeah, because for the banks to make money, banks first need to have people who will deposit money into the bank. NIA RODGERS: Right. JOHN AUGHENBAUGH: Let's just say for instance, Nia you are a thrifty person and you set aside $50 every pay period and you want to put it in the bank as savings. Now, the bank will go ahead and say, ''Nia, hey, thanks for your deposit. In over a period of time, we might go ahead and give you a return of 25 percent.'' NIA RODGERS: One percent at [inaudible] But whatever. Let's say we give a quarter on that every month, we'll give you a quarter of your $50. JOHN AUGHENBAUGH: Now the way the banks make money, then they loan it to people who want to buy a house, buy a car, start a business, etc. Because they charge a higher interest rate on the loan. NIA RODGERS: Than they're giving me. They owe me a quarter. But if they lend my $50 to a person and say you owe us a dollar each month in interests.