I recently sat down with a couple of researchers who wanted to hear my opinion on banking. And I gave them an interview they’ll never forget. I told them that I didn’t trust banks or credit unions because of my knowledge of fractional reserve banking. They didn’t know what I was talking about, so I went back to 1913 and the creation of the Federal Reserve and laid out the history of the decline of the dollar and the fact that every dollar represents debt, not value, since there will never be enough of them to pay off all of the debt in the country. I challenged them to walk into their bank and ask for $10,000 of their own money in cash and see what the teller would say. They would go into panic mode and request several days to come up with that kind of cash. Banks are that close to insolvency. It doesn’t take much to start a bank run. Needless to say, this was all shocking to them because they had apparently never heard anyone talk like this before.
After all that, they asked me to describe my perfect bank, if I ran one. I would call it the Brutal Bank. I told them that my perfect bank would be brutally honest with people, telling clients bluntly that they shouldn’t go into debt for frivolous reasons like vacations or cars. I’d tell potential customers if they were lousy or not. And I wouldn’t say it for the sake of hurting their feelings, but to save them from self-destruction. I’d be hurtful but helpful. It would be an opportunity to educate people about how banks operate. I’d tell them exactly how much money I had in the vault, and I’d explain that for every dollar they put into their savings account, I’d have the freedom to eventually lend up to 10 dollars thanks to the nightmare of the multiplier effect. At the conclusion, I told them I’d be the worst bank of all time, and (to my surprise) they replied, “Not necessarily.”
I had earned their respect by telling them painful things they probably didn’t want to hear. I basically laid out everything that I discussed in my Brewster’s Millions article. One of the researchers was tasked with writing down what I said while the other asked most of the questions, and toward the end of the interview, the one writing said he had gotten so much good material from me.
If you want to earn someone’s respect, tell them something they don’t want to hear, but that they need to hear. I’d like to share a few examples of this from the following four films: Continue reading
