Wampum

Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren caught my eye about a year ago when I was looking at the issue of trying to define what kind of banks, financial institutions generally, should CORE allow to register in any financial TLD(s) that CORE pursues.

Our basic problem is that banks think that the DNS is .COM, and that .COM is just for brand promotion. The idea that public data networks running open protocols, with DNS as a name to resource mapping, and public key digital security to authenticate the parties, and public key crypto to obscure the authenticated transaction, could displace private networks running proprietary protocols, without DNS mapping, and with proprietary security, or simply obscurity, isn't something that comes natural to them.

Now, if we didn't think that ethical banking could be defined, or that we'd not want to damage our brand by providing unethical institutions, then asking what are the profiles of consumer interest rate setting entities wouldn't have crossed my mind. But that is just we intend to do, without the participation of the ABA, or probably its largest and lobbying agenda setting members, some of whom went under a year ago, and some of whom didn't. We'll use the European banks, and the non-banks such as the S&Ls.

In any event, it is good to see her in the Obama White House, even if just for a brief visit.