“I don’t have credit card debt because Suze Orman advises against it, but I was having lunch with a friend the other day, who was a wreck because her bank charges 18 percent interest. There was no way she could ever pay down her credit card debt. So I was thinking that all of us earning 0.4 percent could instead loan money to our friends at 0.5 percent. It was a bit odd thinking of myself as a benevolent loan shark, but, hey, my friend would get out of debt, I would earn $5 a month instead of $4, and the banks would make so much less money that they would have to close half their branches and give us our city back.”

Banks Taketh, but Don’t Giveth - NYTimes.com