And by the way, "stuffing the money under the mattress" is what's happening today as well, just it's the banks doing it, and not us. The reason banks don't lend money, is not because they don't have it, but because they are scared of who to lend it too.
In the old days, people took there money out of the bank because they were worried they were making bad investments with it, and know it could go away. Today, banks are worried themselves they investments are bad, and are effectively being smarter stewards of our capital.
Well, kind off... Banks have no problems lending money to risky borrowers, they just set the interest rate accordingly. Today, it's extremely difficult to know what that interest rate should be. What 5 years ago was a sure thing, today is an unknown.
This is why for years I said we would be far better off if the government just let what was going to fail, fail. That would give all the banks a clear landscape to better predict who to give a loan too.
