In the months, and perhaps quarters ahead, they'll be a great deal of talk about banking reform, in the context of financial services reform.

You'll hear much about the need 'to ban banks' or 'get control of commerce / economic activity out of banks hands' etc.

The fault, dear Brutus, is in ourselves

These well-intentioned arguments are missing the point. The problem is not banks per se, but the abuse of the FDIC provision and related insurance protections. In other words, what has to end is not banks, but 'heads the bank wins, tails the U.S. taxpayer loses (and pays).'

And as I wrote earlier, one viable solution, outlined by economist Richard Felson, is two-tier banking. An interpretive report by Gretchen Morgenson in Sunday's New York Times (NYSE: NYT) basically describes the themes discussed in the two-tier banking blog, and what appears to be the likely direction for banking.

Briefly, in the future, Felson argues that there should be two levels of banks. The first: private banks that invest in commercial operations, offer higher interest rates and have other exotic investment products, but offer no government insurance on deposits.

The second level: community-based banks that invest primarily in conventional mortgages, offer very low interest rates on deposits, have no high-risk / high interest rate investments, but offer government insurance for depositors.