Banks used to be able to make money by lending out the money I left there. (As opposed to, like in the days when I was a kid, keeping it in the vault in a shoebox with my name on it, like they did with everybody else's money, too.)
Then they found out they could loan out my money, and if I came back to get (some of) my money before the loan was paid back they could "borrow" someone else's money to make up the shortfall in my shoebox. After a while they started doing that a whole lot - to the point that they had more money out in loans than they did in all the shoeboxes put together. But because everybody who borrowed money could be trusted to pay it back, there were no problems as long as they could shuffle between shoeboxes if someone who owned the money ever came to get some of it. (Do any of you remember the days when you were asked why you wanted to take money out of the bank? It was not just little kids with penny passbooks! And $diety help you if you were a married woman who did not come armed with a note from your husband saying it was OK for the little lady to take out exactly (and not one penny more!) $x.)
People who had shoeboxes full of money in the bank were more than just OK with that "lending" plan when the banks (under pressure) started sharing the interest they got from the borrowers. Heck, people started putting money in banks specifically in order to earn interest - often moving from bank to bank to get the highest rate!
Then all of a sudden the banks started paying less and less interest to the folks whose shoeboxes were being farmed out in loans. They claimed it was because the people who were borrowing could no longer afford to pay the good interest rates. It has gotten to the point that if you put money in a shoebox in a bank it is actually worth less later on than if you just went ahead and spent it now. So folks stopped putting their money in shoeboxes in banks, and thus banks stopped being able to collect interest on loans because they had no money to loan. But in order to stay in business (apparently banks do other stuff than keeping your money in a shoebox with your name on it) they needed to make money to pay the stockholders and if there was anything left over to pay the bills. So they started charging "fees" for everything but letting you come inside. (And they are probably thinking about how they could get away with that!)
Which is why my Daddy lets me keep my money in a shoebox with my name on it in the bottom of his gun safe, where my money is just as safe as his guns are.
The above story was told to me by a young child who is in the "academically gifted" program at her elementary school, after the class had finished a session on economics. I do not see why anybody needs to be "gifted" to understand that.
stay safe.
