The Bank: The Essential Business in Your Community?

As you drive past corner stores, gasoline stations, restaurants and strip malls in your community, the most significant business that you will encounter will be your neighborhood bank. You can grow food in your backyard or have it shipped to you; you can use public transportation; you can eat in every night and make your own clothes.

But can you safely store your money in your own home? Can you buy a house by borrowing money from an uncle? Can you process your paychecks and turn electronic payments into dollars to spend? Banks are critical to your happiness and success as a human being.

While nearly every citizen uses a bank, everyone benefits from the services a bank renders, whether known or not. Banks ensure that payments make it to the right location, manage cash reserves so that the people who need the cash the most have it and provide borrowing and lending possibilities that are so central to the economy.

In recent years we have experienced first-hand the importance of the real estate market and its central ties to the banking system. Banks take money in on deposit by paying interest to customers. They in turn lend that money back out at a higher interest rate to homeowners purchasing on credit. Banks also lend out funds for automobiles, boats and other large purchase items. Think of it as the bank being the middle man between those who want to put their money to work in exchange for extra cash and those who lack the cash to purchase an asset but who have the ability to pay the cash back. Their payments include additional funds that pay a premium to the original lender and provide the bank with capital to pay their employees.

Some societies have not established the bank as the center piece in the financial system. Their economies tend to be less developed. Even though the economies of advanced societies break down at times with greed or because of banks that operate illegally, banks remain the cornerstone to the economy.

So the next time you see a bank, be thankful for all the critical functions it is performing.