Late Stage Capitalism

They also create money out of nothing to lend it for profit. So that's fun.

"Money is created out of nothing, as bank debt" / "Although new loans are being created, the interest on the principal is not. Nowhere in the system is this additional money created. This gives rise to scarcity, which, in turn, creates competition to acquire the extra money to cover the loans’ interest." / "The competition to obtain the money necessary to pay the interest is structurally embedded in the current money system. [...] to pay back interest on a loan requires using someone else’s principal. In other words, not creating the money to pay interest is the device used to generate the scarcity necessary for a bank-debt monetary system to function. It forces people to compete with each other for money that was never created, and it penalizes them with bankruptcy, should they not succeed." / "When a banker checks a customer’s credit score, it is to assess how successful or aggressive that individual or business will be in contending with others to obtain funds that are not created in sufficiency to pay back the interest on the loan. In a manner of speaking, it’s like a game of musical chairs in that there are never enough seats for everyone. Someone will end up getting squeezed out. There isn’t enough money to pay the interest on all the loans, just like the missing chair. Both are highly competitive games. In the money game, however, the stakes are elevated, as it means grappling with certain poverty or, worse still, having to declare bankruptcy." (from the book "Rethinking Money: How New Currencies Turn Scarcity Into Prosperity" by Bernard Lietaer [who worked at the central bank of Belgium] & Jacqui Dunne)