"Banks have discovered that they can siphon off all the productivity increase + 2% every year, without people complaining too much. They accomplish this currently by increasing the money supply by 5% per year, getting this money returned to them at an interest."<p>This bit is missed by large swaths of the population. But it's not just banks profiting this way, it's government. Deficit spending and funding all these wars is enabled by this mechanism. There's a reason large historic banks have tended to fund wars.