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Comment by leaveyou | Hacker News Reader

"The Fed is by definition the safest place to put your dollars in the world—because it has the ability to create any money in might need to pay you back." This is fantastic. "The Fed can only pay interest on reserves to one type of institution: banks" This is not fantastic. Why can't I as a simple citizen, put my money at Fed and take advantage of the safest interests ever known to man ? This discrimination has to cease or am I missing something ?

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You can - buy T-Bills. You can even buy them directly from the US treasury at https://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/products/prod_tbills_gl...

This is pretty much exactly what the banks are doing, albeit at a larger scale. They buy T-Bills, or other equivalents such as Gilts (UK government backed bonds) as they're as secure as investments get - with reduced returns as the compensation for the increased security of the bonds being backed by one of the worlds major economies.

For more information - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_bond and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_(finance)

Because the system is designed for banks with large sums. If you want similar protection for your money while accruing interest then you can buy government securities (notes, bills and treasuries).

So then the obvious solution is to create your own bank and start depositing money in the Fed. If you can't create a bank, you could probably buy one. I know a YC company that was trying to do that, so it can't be that hard!

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