Partnership banking: how to make our banks fit for purpose

It really is extraordinary how long this debate is becoming.  We have a highly centralised, dysfunctional banking system.  Most of our trading partners also have an effective decentralised local banking system as well, fuelling their economy.  We don't. 

It isn't really rocket science, yet there is David Cameron weighing into Europe to defend what our corrosive City institutions which - apart from paying a humungous amount of tax - don't do the job they are required to do.  Worse, they suck imagination, energy and investment away from productive local economies.

But maybe the answer lies in something a bit like the Bank of North Dakota:

http://www.neweconomics.org/blog/2011/12/08/making-banks-fit-for-purpose