Bankers are practically useless nowadays. They lost their main powers, and their other important powers are mostly also present in others (rulers have tax options).
Rulers can see tax settings, and can call an early tax. The interface for changing actual tax settings *appears* to work, but if you try and commit the changes you get a polite message telling you that you're not he banker, so get lost.
I wouldn't really so no to having them merged into the ruler position anymore, last time I played a banker I found the experience to be very unsatisfying. Their only use is to be able to see the big picture. Just give dukes the power to get a copy of the big picture for a few coins, and you've got that covered.
It's just about getting to that point. Their continual loss of abilities is getting more and more pronounced. If they lose the ability to be notified of large trades, then the only ability they will have left is the overall, big-picture map of the food situation, and the ability to steal gold from regional tax offices. Still, a good banker with cooperative lords can do quite a bit to keep a realm fed. Toss in a few uncooperative lords, though, and it's tot he point where a banker is powerless. Not exactly what you'd expect of a council-level position.
I have advertized D'Hara's offers on these guilds various times. But not everyone is part of them, and I don't feel it bad for people to OOC know that there is a place where trading is taken completely differently.
I agree with Peri on this one. If you want to advertise and arrange food sales, and put feelers out for more business, do it in game, and not on the forums. If your network of IG contacts isn't big enough to reach everyone, then expend the effort /IG/ to expand it and reach the people you want. Posting the info on the forum, and expecting people to take that OOC knowledge IG and take IG action on it is a clear, if minor, breach of IC/OOC separation.
