Patrick McKenzie (patio11) reads his classic Bits about Money essay on how checks shaped the entire American payments infrastructure, from the origins of ACH to why a standard US bank account is, technically, a credit product. He then examines what happened when DOGE tried, via Executive Order 14247, to eliminate federal paper check disbursements by September 2025. The carve-outs Treasury eventually had to make map almost exactly onto the essay's original argument. Checks are the honey badger of payments: the numbers keep dwindling, but the edge cases are irreducible, and the second-best pathway for reaching them doesn't really exist yet.

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Full transcript available here: www.complexsystemspodcast.com/checks/
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Presenting Sponsors: Mercury & Granola

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Links:

The Long Shadow of Checks: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/the-long-shadow-of-checks/

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Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro

(01:12) A brief digression for people who use functioning payment forms

(02:45) Check settlement in the pre-computer era

(07:28) Some funny consequences of checks underpinning everything

(13:20) Money in transit

(14:42) Sponsors: Mercury | Granola

(17:56) Money in transit (part 2)

(21:12) Deposit accounts and their discontents

(23:25) The DOGE postscript

(29:03) Honey Badger Jingle

The honey badger of payments

Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)

The honey badger of payments