Before the 1970s, banks were banks. They did what banks were supposed to do in a state capitalist economy: they took unused funds from your bank account, for example, and transferred them to some potentially useful purpose like helping a family buy a home or send a kid to college.
A Bank in Human Form.
Morgan had arranged to lend the government $36 million in Gold when the national treasury was virtually bankrupt.
I can hold a note as long as the Chase National Bank.
The banking industry has traditionally been characterized by physical branches, privileged access to financial data, and distinct expertise in analyzing such data.
As the United States has become an older nation, reverse mortgages have grown into a $20-billion-a-year industry, with elderly homeowners taking out more than 132,000 such loans in 2007, an increase of more than 270 percent from two years earlier.
Consumer banking - selling debt to middle class families - has been a gold mine.
Banks hold deposits and savings entrusted to them by individuals, by businesses, by governments and by central banks. They put that money to work, helping people to buy homes, for example, or lending to businesses to invest in expansion.
Families rely on financial services more than ever, but those who need them most - who struggle to make ends meet - too often must contend with sky-high interest rates and tricks and traps buried in the fine print of their loan products.
I established my bank in 1988.