I got the cash habit from my grandparents who were trained by the Great Depression to hoard cash. My grampa, who likened capitalism to gambling and banks to casinos, always warned us, that once you put your money in the bank, you risk losing it .

Since I did not listen to grampa, I learned that lesson the hard way, when the Savings and Loans collapsed during the Reagan era and I lost all of my savings.

Adopting grampa's habit maintained financial discipline, that I don't think I could have gotten any other way. Even now, I still stash 10% of everything I earn away - in cash. I even ran our business, including payroll, on a cash basis.

Anyone who has ever taken out a loan, knows how time consuming and annoying all the paperwork can be. That's the reason, that I always enjoyed the convenience, of going to our safe, filling out an IOU and borrowing money from myself, interest free. Quite often, the time savings alone provided a better return on my investment than I could get off any financial product or institution.

How anyone can distrust the government, but trust banks and financial institutions with all their money is beyond me. As you say, depositors are loaning their money to banks, mortgage companies and corporations (via the stock market) and trusting them to be honest.