Noun

bank (plural banks)

1. An institution where one can place and borrow money and take care of financial affairs.
2. A branch office of such an institution
3. An underwriter or controller of a card game, also banque.
4. A safe and guaranteed place of storage for and retrieval of important items or goods.

   blood bank

   sperm bank

   data bank

5. An edge of a river or lake
6. A slope of earth etc.; an embankment

Derived terms

• bankability
• bankable
• bank account
• bank agent
• bank balance
• bank bill
• bank book
• bank card
• bank charges
• bank cheque
• bank clerk
• bank draft
• banker
• bank giro

• bank holiday
• banking
• bank interest
• bank loan
• bank manager
• banknote
• bank of deposit
• bank of issue
• bank paper
• bank rate
• bank reserves
• bankroll
• bank statement
• bank stock

• blood bank
• bottle bank
• break the bank
• central bank
• clearing bank
• cry all the way to the bank
• databank
• investment bank
• Jodrell Bank
• joint-stock bank
• laugh all the way to the bank
• memory bank
• merchant bank
• national bank

• peat bank
• penny bank
• piggy bank
• pot bank
• private bank
• reserve bank
• savings bank
• sperm bank
• spoil bank
• state bank
• stopbank
• take it to the bank
• trustee savings bank
• World Bank

Related terms

• bankrupt

A bank is a financial intermediary that accepts deposits and channels those deposits into lending activities, either directly or through capital markets. A bank connects customers with capital deficits to customers with capital surpluses.

Banking is generally a highly regulated industry, and government restrictions on financial activities by banks have varied over time and location. The current set of global bank capital standards are called Basel II. In some countries such as Germany, banks have historically owned major stakes in industrial corporations while in other countries such as the United States banks are prohibited from owning non-financial companies. In Japan, banks are usually the nexus of a cross-share holding entity known as the keiretsu. In Iceland banks had very light regulation prior to collapse.

The oldest bank still in existence is Monte dei Paschi di Siena, headquartered in Siena, Italy, which has been operating continuously since 1472.

Quotes about the business of Banks: institutions where one can place and borrow money and take care of financial affairs.

Contents

• 1 Sourced
• 2 Unsourced
• 3 Disputed
• 4 See also
• 5 External links

Sourced

• The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it.
  • John Kenneth Galbraith, Money: Whence it came, where it went (1975), p. 15

• The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.
  • John Kenneth Galbraith, Money: Whence it came, Where it Went p. 29

• The modern banking system manufactures “money” out of nothing; and the process is, perhaps, the most, astounding piece of “sleight of hand” that was ever invented. In fact, it was not invented. It merely “grew”. ... Banks in fact are able to create (and cancel) modern “deposit money”, just as much as they were originally able to create, or call in, their own original forms of private notes. They can, in fact, inflate and deflate, i.e., mint, and un-mint the modern “ledger-entry” currency.
  • Angas, Major L. L. B. (Lawrence Lee Bazley) (1937). Slump ahead in bonds. Somerset Pub. Co.. pp. 20-21. OCLC 3506072.

From Wikiquote under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Wed Jul 21 15:30:07 2010