I would recommend the field trip to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. While being a great learning experience, it was also very interesting to see all of the trading floors and the history behind currency. Looking at the chaos of the trading floor drives you to want to understand what is going on, and is a great motivator for learning more about economics. I learned a lot about how Chicago affects the world because of our trading, and learned more about the importance behind the city. It was an excellent trip.

     How do banks make money by holding onto other peoples' money? Banks make money because of a system revolving around their Reserve Requirement. The Reserve Requirement is a law that states: A bank without a minimum of X amount of money cannot open for business. Now "X" is a percentage set by an organization called The Board Of Governors. So if I deposit 100 dollars into a bank that has a reserve requirement of 10 percent, the bank cannot open the next day unless they have at least 10 dollars (assuming I am the only one who made a deposit in said bank). The 90 dollars that are left is what is called the Excess Reserves. This Excess Reserve total is then multiplied by one over the reserve requirement, and the final total is the greatest amount of money the bank can make off of keeping my money for me.

     Check Clearing! The United States bank system consists of 12 different federal reserve banks. These banks create all the money that then gets distributed to their individual region. When you want to send money from one of the 12 regions to the next, your money (in the form of a check) needs to go through a process called check clearing. This simply means that the money from one Federal Reserve bank needs to be exchanged with the money in another Federal Reserve bank. After this is finished, the check is cleared.