Financial crises, twice in so many decades, have exposed our monetary hardwiring as a critical issue of governance. That circuitry starts with a public unit – the dollar -- created and backed by the federal government, but it appoints commercial banks to amplify and spread that money at the retail level. The design does more than delegate distribution to banks. By privileging banks as money creators, it also enables them to determine distribution. Operating according to criteria that are privately determined, banks decide which recipients will benefit from the expansion of a medium that is public. The process is clearly discriminatory.