Last night Saturday Night Live (SNL) ran one of its fake commercials and this one wasn't very funny. The SNL commercial was for a bank that offered to take your deposits and put them in a mattress -- paying no interest. That same bank promised to turn down 99% of the loan requests it received. Maybe it wasn't funny because it reminded me too much of the mess we face thanks to the excess power of banks in the world.

One of the good things about the current financial catastrophe is that it demands a change. Things simply can't keep going the way they have over the last 30 years. No more of this idea of borrowing huge amounts of money to create financial products that nobody can understand so that bankers can get millions in bonuses and stick taxpayers with their losses.

As I've posted, we could replace banks with a network of information about your money. You could deposit your salary and other money electronically and pay for purchases with a credit card or cell phone. If you needed cash for some purchases you could get it at an ATM. And the money would earn interest in government securities. The key difference is that those deposits would not be available to bankers to lend out -- and possibly lose.

This post is part of our feature on Money Winners of 2008. See all 20.

2008 was Tina Fey's year as the award-winning TV star, writer, and creator of 30 Rock, then completing her first hit movie Baby Mama, followed by a return as SNL's Sarah Palin. Fey is now one of the most sought after people in Hollywood.

Evidence of this can be found in the recent Barbara Walters interview listing her as one of the ten most interesting people of the year as well as the current issue of Vanity Fair.

Sarah Palin was a gold mine for political pundits, tabloids, and comedians alike during her run as the vice presidential sidekick of John McCain, but to none more than Tina Fey, the seven-time Emmy award-winning star and writer. Fey's satiric renditions of Palin brought more publicity to both women then either of them could have hoped for.