the ability to offer coverage above the FDIC per account/per bank limit by letting those banks place funds into CDs or deposit accounts issued by other network banks. This occurs in increments below the standard FDIC insurance maximum ($250,000) so that both principal and interest are eligible for FDIC insurance. The company acts as a sort of clearinghouse, matching deposits from one institution with another. Through its services it allows access to higher levels of FDIC insurance although limits apply. Views regarding 2008 near-meltdown of major financial institutions Blinder draws 10 lessons for fellow economists in a 2014 article entitled "What Did We Learn from the Financial Crisis, the Great Recession, and the Pathetic Recovery?” which include: 5) Fraud and near-fraud can rise to attain macroeconomic significance. “ . . I think most of us thought that fraud and near-fraud were in the rounding error—not something that could have consequences on a macroeconomic scale. We were wrong. . ” 6) Excessive complexity is not just anti-competitive, it's dangerous. “ . . When the crash comes, losses may therefore be much larger than investors dreamed imaginable. Markets may dry up as no one knows what these securities are really worth. Panic may set in. Thus complexity per se is a source of risk.” 7) Go-for-broke incentives will induce traders to go for broke. “We had to learn this? Apparently so. “In the years prior to the crisis, banks, investment banks, and hedge funds often compensated their traders in ways that offered fabulous riches for success but comparative slaps on the wrist for failure. . ” Is economics "barking up the wrong tree" by focusing so heavily on consumption, and not on jobs? In a 2019 article entitled "The Free-Trade Paradox: The Bad Politics of a Good Idea," Blinder states that the main focus of the economics profession has been on how to use price signals to produce goods and services as cheaply as possible and how to distribute these goods and services (also using price signals). Jobs are viewed as secondary at best, and in fact often as a distinct negative and as something people put up with only to get the money to afford their own consumption. Blinder writes, “What if people care as much (or more) about their role as producers -- about their jobs -- as they do about the goods and services they consume? That would mean