the whole ripple idea and decentralized exchanges and hawala has my mind going around in circles.

I noticed that bitstamp charges a 0.20% on the IOU, if you are sending a large amount of money, would a bank provide you a better rate on the currency exchange. It seems like BoA does not charge you anything over $1000 when buying currency as they make their money on the spread.

For example I would like to do business in Europe. But I use my USD, in a decentralized exchange I am assuming through IOUs, I could be using USD the whole time. My challenge is, if I where spending a lot of money in inventory maybe even paying someone for warehouse space, etc. (not to mention any kind of business fees etc in the european country)

USD -> XRP -> Euro -> purchase an item (some how) -> sell the item with a mark up to make a profit and cover other expenses -> my profit is in Euro -> XRP -> back to my pocket as USD?

What are the (legal) financial gains from a transaction like this.

BTW... I LOVE THE COMMENT: "Rock solid plain HTML like 1995." Gonna make a shirt like that.