Chicago Plan Resurrected: Circle Obtains Banking License, a Radical Monetary Experiment from 90 Years Ago Quietly Comes Ashore
In the depths of the Great Depression, University of Chicago economists proposed the radical "Chicago Plan": abolishing fractional reserve banking to completely separate money creation from credit issuance. Though deemed too extreme for its time, the core idea of "narrow banking" — where money creation is independent of lending — has resurfaced. Stablecoin issuer Circle’s recent acquisition of a federal bank charter, which explicitly prohibits it from making loans, represents a significant step toward realizing this decades-old theory. The article explores how this modern incarnation could reshape the financial system, questioning who will control the "money spigot" if traditional banks lose their power to create money, and touches on the potential implications, including the dramatic possibility of negative national debt as theorized in a 2012 IMF paper.
marsbit07/16 02:47
