Abstract:Depositors have perceived banks as acting unethically during the most recent recession. One area of consternation is the ambiguity of the legal obligations entailed by the deposit contract when it is backed with only fractional reserves. In this article we apply an existing analysis of the legitimacy and ethicality of banking practices to a wider range of financial transactions, including insurance policies, securities lending, perpetual bonds and callable loans. Securities lending in particular creates rights violations analogous to those in fractional-reserve banking. Both callable loans and perpetual bonds have clear legal obligations which are not inherently problematic, though we herein clarify what these obligations are. Finally, we apply our ethical framework to demonstrate that insurance products are distinct from banking deposit contracts, and that perceived parallels between the two products underestimate these differences.
While ethical implications of direct taxation systems have recently received renewed attention, a more veiled scheme remains unnoticed: inflation. We overview the causes of inflation and assess its consequences. Salient wealth redistributions are a defining feature of inflation, as savers and fixed income individuals see a relative wealth reduction. While avoiding this "tax" is difficult in many instances due to the primacy of money in a monetary economy, the tax codes of most developed countries allow avoidance techniques to be employed. We analyze three ways that inflation may be avoided in an attempt to preserve personal wealth, as well as the consequences of such practices.
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