Is the Internet Finally Robbing the Greedy Financier’s Gravy Train?

If you want to start a company that can make the world a significantly better place, finance seems a good route to go right now. It is pretty much the poster-child industry for corruption, inefficiency, insularity, and treating customers with contempt.

The typos in this article really kill it for me.</complaint>

Valid points about lowering prices in industries with middle-men, but this is hardly a Robin Hood argument (steal from the reach with force who stole from the poor with force) as no force is involved beyond simple market forces of supply and demand.

Actually, we'd see even lower prices across all of these categories if there were less regulation protecting the incumbents and less overall dollars in circulation causing inflation.

If someone forced me to do a startup in the finance industry it would be a loan company requiring the person to update their financials semi-annually. With the loan risk being continually updated the loans could be packaged and syndicated without the need for the heavy insurance and rating companies manipulation that goes on now. All done on the net.

Using my web bank today, I thought how nice it would be if, say, Google offered a banking service. It feels ridiculously far behind. I can name my accounts, but only up to 8 characters or so, statements are hard to read (where did the money come from/go to?) and there are no analysis capabilities whatsoever.