Of all the many ways of organising banking, the worst is the one we have today.

When banks extend loans to their customers, they create money by crediting their customers’ accounts.

When I was a graduate student at Harvard, I learned about showers and central heating. Ten years later, I learned about breakfast meetings. These are America's three great contributions to civilization.

The underlying intellectual argument for seeking to tax economic rents retains its force.

There is no reason products and services could not be swapped directly by consumers and producers through a system of direct exchange – essentially a massive barter economy. All it requires is some commonly used unit of account and adequate computing power to make sure all transactions could be settled immediately. People would pay each other electronically, without the payment being routed through anything that we would currently recognize as a bank. Central banks in their present form would no longer exist – nor would money.

Global market forces will sort out those companies that do not have sound corporate governance.

Of all the many ways of organising banking, the worst is the one we have today.