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Fed Accounts For All!

NPR

Your bank has its own bank account — with the Federal Reserve. That account pays interest of nearly two percent and offers instantaneous payment clearning.

We, on the other hand, get much less than two percent on our own bank accounts, and clearing a check or money transfer can take days. The problems are worse for the large unbanked population in the United States, which faces burdensome costs and inconveniences because they lack access to basic banking services.

So, maybe it's time we all had the option of having our own accounts directly with the Fed? That's the proposal from Morgan Ricks, who takes us through the problems it would solve, and how, on today's episode.


Details of Morgan's idea, for those curious, are here: https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2018/06/20/federal-reserve-bank-accounts/

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Stacey Vanek Smith is the co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. She's also a correspondent for Planet Money, where she covers business and economics. In this role, Smith has followed economic stories down the muddy back roads of Oklahoma to buy 100 barrels of oil; she's traveled to Pune, India, to track down the man who pitched the country's dramatic currency devaluation to the prime minister; and she's spoken with a North Korean woman who made a small fortune smuggling artificial sweetener in from China.
Cardiff Garcia is a co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money podcast, along with Stacey Vanek Smith. He joined NPR in November 2017.