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Comment by kbenson | Hacker News Reader

> governments have deemed them too important for normal people and so they in effect subsidize them and fund them through amongst other things Fractional Reserve Banking.

Isn't Fractional Reserve Banking where banks are required to keep a portion of the deposits available as a reserve in case their investments go bad? How is that governments subsidizing them? Without fractional reserve, banks would be free to lend out as much of your deposited money as they thought they could get away with.

Edit: Ah, from reading some more it appears it's different in a few very important details, even if the structure is the same. The Banks are only allowed to lend a certain multiple of the cash reserves they have on hand, not a certain fraction. That is, reserve deposits are a fraction of lending, not vice-versa. I'm still not sure how that's governments subsidizing them though. Without the restriction on lending, I could see banks getting a little wild in the boom economies (which happened in the mid to late 2000s).

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"reserve deposits are a fraction of lending, not vice-versa"

It amazes me how many people get that backwards.

If a bank could loan more money than had on deposit, they could could simply loan themselves or other banks enough to pay off depositors. That is literally a license to print money. And the government prefers to keep that power for themselves. That's what the Federal Reserve is.

For every deposit of $10, they might earn 2% on the $9 they are allowed to lend out. They have to live on that 18 cents.

If they were able to loan out $90 or $100 (depending on what theory you hear), they'd make 10 times as much. Within a decade, they wouldn't need their deposits.

But banks do fail, so clearly that is not the case.

I think people are confusing modern banks with ancient banks that took in gold deposits and issued paper notes based on those deposits, sometimes issuing more notes than the gold they had on deposit. That is a completely different situation. And was not sustainable when it did occur.

The banking system is a huge creator of bubbles, but it does not work the way many imagine.

I asked one believer in the multiplier theory to show me the statute that says it works that way. He found the law that contradicted his belief and insisted it proved it.

When banks lend someone money via FRB they aren't moving money from one account to another to make them available on the loaners account. They are literally making the money appear without it afecting any other account in the system.

Banks can loan more out than they have in the bank but it's relative to how much they have in the bank they can loan out.

It's the central banks who "vouch" for this mechanism and is why banks are said to be able to "print" money out of no-where I guess.

May I ask why you think that is the case?

"Because bank deposits are usually considered money in their own right, and because banks hold reserves that are less than their deposit liabilities, fractional-reserve banking permits the money supply to grow beyond the amount of the underlying reserves of base money originally created by the central bank.[1][3] In most countries, the central bank (or other monetary authority) regulates bank credit creation, imposing reserve requirements and capital adequacy ratios. This can limit the amount of money creation that occurs in the commercial banking system, and helps to ensure that banks are solvent and have enough funds to meet demand for withdrawals.[3]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking

The point about Fractional reserve banking is to allow banks to create debt which is another way to create money. (Debt is money)

This is actually what a lot of people are missing. It's not money thats being created per se but debt (credit) which is the same thing but just in put in a different context.

"banks hold reserves that are less than their deposit liabilities"

If you hold one dollar of a ten dollar deposit and loan out nine, reserves ARE less than their liabilities.

They still owe $10 plus interest to the depositor. They only have $1, on average. That's less than their liabilities. It doesn't say what you think it does.

"the central bank (or other monetary authority) regulates bank credit creation, imposing reserve requirements and capital adequacy ratios"

The reserve requirement is a RESTRICTION on how much the bank can lend. Not a multiplier the bank can apply to deposits to print money.

If the Fed RAISED the reserve requirement, banks could not lend as much. If it completely removed the reserve requirement, banks could lend more.

That's my reading of your quote.

Thats not what Fractional Reserve Banking is.

It's not "Money from the bank" but allowed debt creation backed by the central banks beyond

This is the important part of the quote which you left out.

"fractional-reserve banking permits the money supply to grow beyond the amount of the underlying reserves of base money"

Nothing in that talks about limiting it within their deposits. If that was the case then we wouldn't have had any issues at all since all banks did with the sub-prime crisis was creating debt without any actual "real money" being used as base for the loans.

If they raised the reserve requirement they could not lend out as much but still more than they have because again it's not actually money but debt. It's just that they now have much harder restrictions on the ratio.

Not a single dollar is moved from somewhere else in the bank to the lendee. It's literally just debt created.

Thats at least how I have understood it and maybe we are saying the same thing just focusing on different parts.

The point really is that banks do not actually move money they have to your account but instead create debt on your account without anything else is affected.

Not sure how else to think of it.

Here's what the Fed says:

"The amount of reserves that a depository institution must hold against specified deposit liabilities."

http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/reform_glossary.htm

And here's a table showing the exact percentages of DEPOSIT liabilities:

https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/reservereq.htm...

It doesn't get more definitive than that. And if it were a multiplier, how much can a bank lend out if they have less than $15 million in deposits? Infinity?

A bank that doesn't loan out more than it has is not involved in FRB.

FRS is the act of central banks allowing banks to add money on accounts up to the ratio amount.

In other words. Banks can create money "out of the blue" since most money are just numbers and not actual cash.

Lending out money this way is not affecting any other accounts. No money is being taken from somewhere and put into the lendees account. Instead banks are allowed to create the loan which is debt, not to the bank but to the lendee. To the bank this is an asset to the lendee this is debt.

In other words the bank have more money after they give the loan not less.

It doesn't get much clearer hat than that IMO.

I know you think it works that way. But can you point to any authoritative evidence that it works that way?

A simple statement on a Federal Reserve web site stating that such a bank has to keep deposits and that the loan comes from new money created should be sufficient.

"fractional-reserve banking permits the money supply to grow beyond the amount of the underlying reserves of base money"

I think you misunderstand the meaning of that quote. The money supply doesn't grow beyond the amount of underlying reserves because an individual bank lends out more than it has in deposits (and other funds). The multiplier is the result of this cascade: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking#Exa...

> reserve deposits are a fraction of lending, not vice-versa. I'm still not sure how that's governments subsidizing them though.

Where does the rest of the money that's lent out come from? If you deposit $100 and the bank can, based on that deposit, lend out $1000 (assuming a 10% reserve requirement, which is fairly typical), where does the other $900 come from?

[Edit: this is somewhat misstated, see subthread under jonas21's response.]

There is a subsidy, but you are putting it in the wrong place in the chain of events. It is the government backstop that is the subsidy, not legalizing the ability to make promises.

If you had a banking system with no government backstop you could still have fractional reserve banking but all the players in the system would bear the counterparty risks. The bank could claim you $500 in it but in reality you'd have a contingent interest in the assets of the bank.

Money markets worked this way until the USG decided to reward the gamblers by treating them identically to the more prudent.

> It is the government backstop that is the subsidy, not legalizing the ability to make promises.

A bank lending out more money than it actually has on deposit is not just "making promises"; it's "making promises they know they can't keep". Yes, banks did get away with that before the government got into the business of printing money, but it was riskier for them, which is why they prefer to have the government do it--in other words, instead of taking on the risk themselves of printing money not backed by deposits, they prefer to have the government print the money and give it to them to lend. See my response to sbov upthread.

The "backstop" is certainly a factor, of course--it's what prevents ordinary bank runs from happening. But, as I noted in my response to sbov upthread, that certainly doesn't eliminate financial panics; it just exchanges one failure mode for another (arguably worse) one.

* If you had a banking system with no government backstop you could still have fractional reserve banking but all the players in the system would bear the counterparty risks. The bank could claim you $500 in it but in reality you'd have a contingent interest in the assets of the bank.*

Well, I suppose this is true in a technical sense, but the fact is that practically nobody, in the days when banks did this (i.e., before governments started printing the money), understood that this was what was happening. Again, see my response to sbov upthread.

> Money markets worked this way until the USG decided to reward the gamblers by treating them identically to the more prudent.

I certainly agree that USG's actions have not helped; but "banking" is a much broader category than "money markets", and fractional reserve banking is centuries old. And, as I noted above, practically nobody who deposited money in a bank or borrowed money from one realized what was actually going on; they thought that the bank being "reputable" meant it only lent money it actually had. When people did realize what was actually going on, they started a bank run.

> it's "making promises they know they can't keep".

If that's the case, how do they keep fulfilling those promises? Not fulfilling the promised is the exception, not the norm. You should check your assumptions when they don't align with reality.

If you believe any lending when you don't have the full money on hand to account for all the loans is wrong, then you need to apply the same level of scrutiny to borrowing. Borrowing money to do something you didn't have the money to do initially would be just as wrong. The system works because both sides are taking on risk. The borrower's risk (and the risk of everyone using the money( is spread throughout the entire system though.

> If that's the case, how do they keep fulfilling those promises?

By having the government magically conjure new money into existence, and getting everybody to believe that that counts as "fulfilling the promise". And then having to wave their hands and obfuscate when the economy melts down.

> If you believe any lending when you don't have the full money on hand to account for all the loans is wrong, then you need to apply the same level of scrutiny to borrowing.

What counts as "the same level of scrutiny"? The analogue from the borrower's side would be borrowing money without any intention of paying it back, not borrowing money period. If the borrower takes the money, does something profitable with it, and pays back the loan with interest out of the profits, there's nothing wrong with that; indeed, it's why borrowing exists in the first place: because it's a positive sum transaction, benefiting both sides.

> The system works because both sides are taking on risk.

A system in which loans were always backed by real wealth would have this property; the lender takes the risk that the borrower won't pay the loan back in full, with interest, and the borrower takes the risk that his business venture won't pan out and he'll have to either find some other way to pay back the loan, with interest, or default and take the penalty for that. But both sides also have the possibility of gain to balance the risk.

But our current system forces third parties--the taxpayers--to also take on risk: the risk of having to bail everyone out when the house of cards collapses and the economy melts down. What gain do the taxpayers get in exchange?

> What gain do the taxpayers get in exchange?

Overall economic growth. If you believe that a system where only real assets could be used to back a loan, and loans needed to be backed 100% by real assets would result in the same or better overall situation now if started some point in the distant past, then yes, we should strive for that. Personally I believe that the current system has allowed advancement farther and faster than the alternative. Sometimes progress is best achieved not through the safest route, but through the fastest of the routes with the acceptable safety margins, given a cost/benefit analysis. That's the system we live in. We don't always agree on the metrics of the cost benefit analysis, or what constitutes a good safety margin, but even the safest path forward we have is not guaranteed (recessions and depressions can still happen, regardless).

> Overall economic growth.

Thank you very much! You have actually come out and said what even Nobel-Prize-winning economists are unwilling to say.

Here is the argument you are making, in a nutshell: if we limited ourselves to a "hard money" system with no fractional reserve banking, economic growth would be too slow. So in order to get faster economic growth, we allow fiat money and fractional-reserve banking; but we also have to accept the downside of that, which is occasional economic meltdowns and a general skew in the way wealth is distributed. This is a fair tradeoff because the benefits of faster economic growth outweigh the costs of economic instability and skewed wealth distribution.

Whether or not I agree with this argument is really beside the point (I don't think I do, on balance, but it's certainly not a slam dunk either way so I can understand that reasonable people could take either side). The point is that we, the taxpayers, were not sold the system we have on the basis of this argument. We were sold the system we have on the basis of "it will make sure no Great Depression ever happens again--trust us!" We have never had a real public debate on whether it really is a fair tradeoff to accept economic instability and skewed wealth distribution in exchange for faster economic growth. (I personally think that is because the parties that benefit from the existing system, mainly politicians and banks, are afraid that a real public debate would result in a majority of people rejecting the existing system and demanding a different one, one that would be harder for the existing players to game. But the only way to know for sure is to have the debate.)

> Thank you very much! You have actually come out and said what even Nobel-Prize-winning economists are unwilling to say.

I didn't think it was that controversial. I'm not aware of any economists that wouldn't endorse a system such as that (even if they disagree whether we are currently acting within the constraints as they think they should be), unless they are forced to also be politicians (such as the Fed chair).

> Here is the argument you are making...

Yes, except I don't think that's as much a facet of FRB as much as Fed lending. FRB can exist with just deposits, and FRB rules are to keep banks from getting too leveraged. FRB can happen with an entirely commercial backer to the bank, so I I think FRB is a red-herring. At this point we are just talking about central bank lending (which could happen without FRB, as well). I will concede that the importance of FRB is greatly influenced by the ability of Fed lending.

> Whether or not I agree with this argument is really beside the point (I don't think I do, on balance, but it's certainly not a slam dunk either way so I can understand that reasonable people could take either side).

Definitely. I would be willing to revise my view of it with more information. I'm far from authoritative on the subject. My knowledge comes mostly from discussions here, common sense, Planet Money, Freakonomics, and some other random sources, in roughly that order.

> We have never had a real public debate on whether it really is a fair tradeoff to accept economic instability and skewed wealth distribution in exchange for faster economic growth.

That may be framing it a bit strongly. I'm not sure that requiring real assets to back loans leads to more stability. One of the selling points of Fed lending is that it provides a lever to control (or at least influence) the economy. If you believe that enough that you think the influence matters, it's a question of what has a stronger influence or more likely, under what constraints does that influence outweigh the runaway situations (that might be exacerbated by FRB) it's meant to counteract.

> But the only way to know for sure is to have the debate.

Well, I'm all for the debate. :) I don't necessarily think the public would go one way or the other by themselves. The topic is complex enough, with enough moving parts, that I think the majority could easily be swayed by their politicians of choice and the view they espouse.

I don't doubt that our current economic system is purely hovering semi-close to a local maximum. We could probably find much better systems with the ability to perform meaningful tests. Unfortunately, meaningful tests are hard because it's hard to simulate real, encompassing behavior of people in a test. I'm also not sure that a superior system wouldn't die off purely due to the inertia of the current system. All things being equal, a better system might win, but things aren't equal, the current system has a lot of leverage to bring to bear.

> FRB can exist with just deposits

True; and so can the economic instability that comes with the possibility of bank runs. Also, the argument that that possibility is worth accepting in exchange for greater economic growth can be made with FRB alone; Fed lending is not required. (Fed lending might make the argument easier to make, since it comes along with the government guaranteeing bank deposits, so that an ordinary bank run basically can't happen in our current system. Instead we just get occasional meltdowns of the entire economy; but it's easier to shift the blame for that.)

> I'm not sure that requiring real assets to back loans leads to more stability.

I certainly don't have a proof that it does--I don't think economics is anywhere near developed enough as a science to be able to produce such a proof. But there is an obvious heuristic argument: requiring real assets to back loans ensures that whatever the borrower does with the loan, it must provide enough benefit (on average--obviously there's always risk involved in individual cases, but that's true of any economic venture) to make him willing to bid away those real assets from whoever else wants to use them. In other words, it uses the price mechanism for the purpose intended: to channel real resources to their highest valued uses. But as soon as you allow loans to be made without real assets backing them, you break that mechanism, and at that point, all bets are off.

> If you believe that enough

I don't--not because the influence doesn't exist (clearly it does), but because nobody understands how the economy works well enough to make using that influence a net gain. We'd be better off if everyone admitted that nobody knows how to run the economy, and adjusted our expectations accordingly.

> Instead we just get occasional meltdowns of the entire economy

I think we have different metrics for what constitutes a meltdown. We haven't had another great depression, which is what I would consider a meltdown. We've had recessions, less than desirable economic growth over periods, but that's a far cry from a Grapes of Wrath dust bowl type situation.

> it must provide enough benefit (on average--obviously there's always risk involved in individual cases, but that's true of any economic venture) to make him willing to bid away those real assets from whoever else wants to use them.

That argument only works if you think the banks don't make their own assessment on the risk of individuals and whether they are even going to lend. If money was unlimited then that would be the case, but there's a cost to borrowing, and a cost to lending. In a well balanced system the costs of each are outweighed by the gains. As it is now, different people and different ventures get different rates because the risk is not the same. The Fed provides liquidity, which makes the market more efficient, and uses rates to simulate supply. The banks provide market pricing by assessing borrowers and additionally tweaking the interest rate up or down, further simulating supply.

> We'd be better off if everyone admitted that nobody knows how to run the economy, and adjusted our expectations accordingly.

We're driving in the fog. We have limited time to see the dangers and take action, but if we don't attempt to steer in any way, for all we know we'll just start going in circles. The clues that we're makign headway aren't always clear, but they do come occasionally. I would rather tweak the current method than abandon it entirely, as it seems to be working overall, even if not fairly (we're all gaining, just not at the same rate).

> We haven't had another great depression

But we did have one, and it happened almost two decades after the Federal Reserve was put in place.

Also, I think the situation in 2008 qualifies as a "meltdown", even though it was not as severe as the Great Depression. It was just a meltdown in a reactor that had had some additional backup safety features put in place since the last one.

> That argument only works if you think the banks don't make their own assessment on the risk of individuals and whether they are even going to lend.

Of course banks are going to do that, but I don't see how that invalidates what I'm saying. In a banking system where there is no FRB and no fiat money, there is no way to expand the money supply at will to provide enough for everyone who wants a loan. So there will be more potential borrowers than there are real assets to lend to them. Obviously banks ultimately get to choose who they will lend to, but a key component of their decision is going to be what interest rate various borrowers are willing to pay. A rational bank will choose whichever set of borrowers will maximize its expected return, adjusted for risk, and the higher the rate a borrower is willing to pay, the more likely it is that that borrower will be in the set that maximizes the bank's expected return. See further comments below.

> As it is now, different people and different ventures get different rates because the risk is not the same.

Sure, and that would still be true in the hypothetical system I was describing; a borrower who was more risky would have to be willing to pay a higher interest rate. And a rational borrower would only be willing to do that if his expected return, adjusted for risk, was high enough to make it worth paying the higher rate. So there would be risk assessment being done on both sides. In other words, there would be a functioning price mechanism driven by supply and demand.

> The Fed provides liquidity, which makes the market more efficient, and uses rates to simulate supply. The banks provide market pricing by assessing borrowers and additionally tweaking the interest rate up or down, further simulating supply.

Yes--"simulating" supply. But why does supply have to be "simulated"? Because the usual price mechanism has been broken. In a market with a functioning price mechanism, nobody has to "simulate" anything.

> if we don't attempt to steer in any way, for all we know we'll just start going in circles

You're assuming that the entire economy has to be "steered" in a single direction. But an economy is not a monolith; it's billions of people each with their own needs and wants, trying to improve their condition through specialization and trade. Why does it have to be "steered"?

I assume you're trying to imply that it comes from the government. Fractional reserve banking started before central banks, and that extra $900 came from notes the bank printed out, which people would accept as payment for goods and serviced because the bank was reputable.

Since most of our money is digital nowadays, it would be even easier than in the past: the major banks could get together and just agree to tick up someone's account by X amount when another bank requests it. No government required.

> I assume you're trying to imply that it comes from the government.

Yes, because that's how our current system works. The government prints money whenever a bank wants to lend it out, regardless of whether additional wealth was created or not.

> Fractional reserve banking started before central banks

Sure, and in those past systems, individual banks printed money to lend out, regardless of whether additional wealth was created or not. But in our current system, only the government is allowed to do that. Not that that absolves the banks--see below.

> which people would accept as payment for goods and serviced because the bank was reputable.

Yes. But what does "reputable" mean? What people thought it meant, back in the days when banking was young, was that the bank only lent out wealth that some other depositor had put in. In other words, when you took out a loan from the bank, you believed you were borrowing actual wealth that someone else had made available, and you paid an extra fee (the interest on the loan) for the use of that wealth in some (hopefully) profitable enterprise. The bank, in turn, made a profit as a middleman or broker, hooking up people who had surplus wealth to invest with people who had business enterprises that needed wealth.

But then some banks got the bright idea that they could increase their profits by printing more notes than they actually had wealth on deposit, and relying on people's belief that they were "reputable" to get those notes accepted at par--i.e., at the same rate as if they were actually backed by real wealth. If we actually described things as they were, instead of using euphemisms like "fractional reserve banking", the proper name for this would be "fraud". But it also happens to work, as long as one doesn't call it by its right name. Although it does have the downside of creating periodic financial panics, whenever people actually figure out that there isn't enough wealth on deposit at the bank to back all of the notes in circulation, and then they start rushing to the bank to redeem their notes for actual wealth before everyone else does--in other words, a bank run. One of the reasons that banks prefer to have the government do the money printing is that it eliminates this failure mode (in exchange for other worse ones)--see below.

> Since most of our money is digital nowadays, it would be even easier than in the past: the major banks could get together and just agree to tick up someone's account by X amount when another bank requests it. No government required.

They "could" do that in the sense of it being physically possible, sure. But in fact they don't, because it's illegal. Instead, they got the government to create the Federal Reserve, which does the money printing and allows the banks to maintain plausible deniability. It also has the advantage that, unlike private banks, the government can force people to accept its notes as legal tender, which eliminates the possibility of a bank run in the usual sense (though it certainly does not eliminate financial panics and boom/bust cycles, as we are now all too aware). I'm certainly not saying the banks are blameless in all this; I'm just saying that their current method of transferring wealth to their own pockets requires the government as a middleman.

>The government prints money whenever a bank wants to lend it out

No they don't. Currency in circulation is but a fraction of the money supply.

>If we actually described things as they were, instead of using euphemisms like "fractional reserve banking", the proper name for this would be "fraud"

Only if you accept that any IOU (which is "backed" by nothing but a promise to repay) is "fraud".

>then they start rushing to the bank to redeem their notes for actual wealth before everyone else does--in other words, a bank run

During a bank run people are rushing to obtain notes from the bank, not redeem them. The bank then doesn't have enough cash to fulfill the redemption. You have it backwards.

>But in fact they don't, because it's illegal.

They do it everyday, in plain sight of MASSIVE amounts of regulation.

You are seriously confused about the banking system. Less time viewing conspiracy theories on YouTube, more time reading work by the people who design and use the system. Despite what your sources tell you, the system is transparent (albeit complicated).

> Currency in circulation is but a fraction of the money supply

You are interpreting "printing money" way too literally. See my other comments in parallel subthreads.

> Only if you accept that any IOU (which is "backed" by nothing but a promise to repay) is "fraud".

A bank doesn't give me an IOU when it gives me a loan; it gives me actual money. Nor does it give depositors IOUs; they can get actual money in exchange for their deposits any time.

> During a bank run people are rushing to obtain notes from the bank, not redeem them.

To obtain notes corresponding to the amount they had on deposit, yes.

> The bank then doesn't have enough cash to fulfill the redemption.

Aren't you contradicting yourself? You just said "redemption" had nothing to do with it.

> They do it everyday, in plain sight of MASSIVE amounts of regulation.

No, they do something that is equivalent to the government printing money, if you don't insist on a way too literal interpretation. See above.

What the banks do not do is create money outside the very precise rules set down by the regulations you refer to. They also don't create money that is not denominated in the government's fiat currency. So they don't do anything that is analogous to what private banks did before governments outlawed private currency.

> A bank doesn't give me an IOU when it gives me a loan; it gives me actual money

Actual money is an IOU. From the gov't to the holder of the piece of paper. It used to say so on every bill: "Will pay to the bearer on demand".

> It used to say so on every bill: "Will pay to the bearer on demand".

Yes, "used to say", before the government decided it would no longer pay specie (gold) for currency notes. So money used to be an IOU of a sort, but it isn't now. (And even when specie payments were being made, there was never enough gold to back all the notes in circulation, so the IOUs weren't all valid anyway. They worked because people didn't treat them as IOUs; they treated them as a valuable commodity in their own right. So I don't think money ever really functioned as an IOU. Now, of course, we have no choice but to treat it as a valuable commodity in its own right.)

>Aren't you contradicting yourself? You just said "redemption" had nothing to do with it.

First of all, I didn't say redemption "has nothing to do with it". I did use the word redemption, but in a completely different context than you.

To reiterate: people are trying to obtain dollars in a bank run, not get rid of them. They're trying to exchange their bank IOUs (chequing accounts), which are worthless if the bank collapses, for FRB IOUs, which will still have value.

>A bank doesn't give me an IOU when it gives me a loan; it gives me actual money. Nor does it give depositors IOUs; they can get actual money in exchange for their deposits any time.

Umm, a chequing account with deposits is a bank liability (IOU). And you can't get money in exchange for your deposit at any time, account dependent. Your chequing account? Sure. That's why you receive a negative rate on it net of fees.

Again, you don't even seem to have a grasp of day-to-day personal banking. Follow the balance sheet transactions for a loan, watch how the assets and liabilities move around. If you can't even do that, why are you arguing about this stuff?

> I did use the word redemption, but in a completely different context than you.

I didn't use the word in any context except quoting you. Anyway, it seems like the problem here is that you are using words according to the Humpty Dumpty principle: they mean whatever you want them to mean. I can't follow your shifting meanings, so I'll just bow out here.

The $900 comes from trust. If I'm a highly respected and wealthy individual in a 18th century village, I could conceivably issue my own notes about my promise to pay the recipient. If someone comes to me for a loan, I could issue a number of these notes to that individual, and anyone else in the village that trusts my ability and likelihood to pay might be willing to take those notes. I have just demonstrated my ability to lend money with no reserve, since I have not demonstrated my finances, people have taken it on reputation and trust. This will work for as long as I'm both mostly restricting my loans to people that will pay back, and not too many people try to redeem the notes at once. This is possible without a government, so the government is not responsible for allowing this, they are putting some restraints on how much of the money I have on hand I can leverage in this manner, so they are regulating it.

> The $900 comes from trust.

Trust of whom? Who prints the money?

I said "I could issue a number of these notes". It comes of trust in me, or trust in the system of people getting notes from me, as they see the outcomes.

There is no difference in printing my own notes than the government printing theirs beyond the trust of the people that it's worth something. That's an intrinsic feature of fiat money. People can lose faith in government currency, there's numerous cases around the world of it happening before.

We aren't trading actual physical goods (gold, silver) or notes directly exchangeable for them any more, and haven't been for a long while.

> I said "I could issue a number of these notes".

Not in our current system. Only the government can issue notes; for anyone else to do so is illegal. That was my point.

(It's true that, in our current system, most money creation is actually electronic--entries in accounting databases--rather than physical notes. But all of that money creation is still done under rules set down by the government, and denominated in the government's fiat currency. So it's equivalent, for my purposes here, to the government printing notes directly. And nobody can just decide to create, say, a new bank deposit any time they want, or denominate it in their own currency.)

> There is no difference in printing my own notes than the government printing theirs beyond the trust of the people that it's worth something.

In principle this is, of course, true. But I wasn't arguing that our current system is the only possible fiat money system with fractional reserve banking. I was only arguing that, in our current system as it exists, the government is in fact the only entity allowed to print money (with the qualifications I gave above).

Okay, then the answer to your question "Where does the rest of the money that's lent out come from?" is that it's a passed through loan. The central bank (government) lends the bank you are dealing with funds at a specific rate (publicized), in large amounts. The bank you are getting a loan from then re-lends this money to you at a higher rate. You could lend the money you borrowed yourself to your friends at an even higher rate, if you liked. You would need to make sure your friends were likely to pay you back though, as if they don't you would still be liable for the money you borrowed (thus why you charge a higher rate, in addition to trying to make some money). The government lends to banks and not you because it's easier to assess the risk, and different banks are more willing to take bets and invest in specific things the government might see as too risky.

> then the answer to your question "Where does the rest of the money that's lent out come from?" is that it's a passed through loan

In other words, the original source of the rest of the money is the government. Yes, that is exactly the point I was trying to make.

> You could lend the money you borrowed yourself to your friends at an even higher rate, if you liked.

Yes, but unlike commercial banks, you can't have the government print extra money (directly or indirectly) just because you made a loan. Nor can you lend money to your friends and also give the same money back to whoever you got it from, without waiting for your friends to pay back the loan.

> The government lends to banks and not you because it's easier to assess the risk

I understand that that's the story we get told, but that doesn't make it true. The government lends to banks because it is transferring wealth to the banks, but doesn't want to make it obvious that that's what is happening.

> Yes, but unlike commercial banks, you can't have the government print extra money (directly or indirectly) just because you made a loan. Nor can you lend money to your friends and also give the same money back to whoever you got it from, without waiting for your friends to pay back the loan.

Well, to a degree you can. There's probably always someone to lend to you at some rate. Future loans would have to use this new rate. That's not much different than Fed lending. You don't get to participate in a large system where the friction of that is all worn away, but that's a matter of scale. I don't think we are discussing the right of individuals to get all the benefits of working at scale.

> I understand that that's the story we get told, but that doesn't make it true. The government lends to banks because it is transferring wealth to the banks, but doesn't want to make it obvious that that's what is happening.

So the government is transferring wealth to the banks. That's indisputable. I don't agree that's the purpose of the arrangement though. It's a byproduct (but a byproduct a lot of people like, and try to make sure they perpetuate) of the real goal, which is economic advancement for the whole country. I also won't dispute that it's disproportionately helping the banks and those rich enough already to be part of the system.

> to a degree you can. There's probably always someone to lend to you at some rate.

If you're a commercial bank, you don't have to get another loan.

> I don't think we are discussing the right of individuals to get all the benefits of working at scale.

No; but we are discussing "benefits of working at scale" that aren't really due to working at scale, but to special privileges that commercial banks have that private individuals don't.

> I don't agree that's the purpose of the arrangement though.

It's not the ostensible purpose, no. But when one looks at the history of how the Fed came into existence, it's hard to shake the feeling that it was the real purpose, whether or not anyone will ever admit that.

> If you're a commercial bank, you don't have to get another loan.

Yes, you do. They borrow more money from the Fed, at the current Fed rate. This may not go through all the hoops a regular lendor requires, but it is a loan. That's why bank loan rates closely follow Fed rates. It's not money for free, it's very easy loans.

> No; but we are discussing "benefits of working at scale" that aren't really due to working at scale, but to special privileges that commercial banks have that private individuals don't.

Individuals also don't have to match the regulatory burden of the banks. Any individual could match those burdens (which may require a minimum loan amount, and a minimum amount of money on-hand) and try to get themselves certified as a bank, and then they could. They would need to meet the regulatory requirements too at that point though. You could argue that banks don't have enough regulatory hurdles in place to make up for the sweet deal they are getting from the Fed, but that's not the argument I've seen put forth.

> But when one looks at the history of how the Fed came into existence, it's hard to shake the feeling that it was the real purpose

Well, I don't see it that way, so it's it's not that hard for me. In order to try to control the economy, some regulations and incentives were put in place. Those are always able to be gamed, so you can either try to reduce the gaming to increasingly hard edge cases, or do away with the regulation. I think the regulation has a net positive effect, so I'm in favor of the former.

In other words, no matter what alternative you propose, if it was adopted it would be easy to look at it, look at the proponents that gained from it, and conclude the real purpose was to benefit those individuals. There's always winners and losers in any controlled situation, as the control always suits some better than others.

> In order to try to control the economy, some regulations and incentives were put in place.

Again, I agree that this was the ostensible purpose. But it only makes sense on the assumption that it is possible to control the economy in the first place; and that only makes sense on the assumption that economics is a precise enough science to be used for such control. I suppose it's possible that central bankers in 1913 actually believed that, but it seems highly unlikely to me. It seems far more probable to me that they knew they were essentially selling snake oil; but of course they weren't going to say so. They were tired of the government coming to them for money every time there was a financial panic, so they decided to do something about it, and if that meant selling snake oil packaged as "regulations and incentives to control the economy" to politicians who didn't know any better anyway, so be it.

> There's always winners and losers in any controlled situation

You're ignoring the alternative of a non-controlled situation, i.e., a free market that treats money just like any other commodity. There will still be winners and losers in such a situation, but it would be impossible to attribute that to the control preferentially advantaging some parties over others, since there would be no control to begin with.

A 10% reserve requirement would mean that if you deposit $100, then your bank can then lend out $90 of it, not $1000.

The money supply has expanded because there is now $190 of things that work like cash out there -- the $100 on my bank account balance plus the $90 that was lent to someone else -- but this is very different from saying the bank can turn around and lend out a multiple of what I have deposited.

> A 10% reserve requirement would mean that if you deposit $100, then your bank can then lend out $90 of it, not $1000.

I misstated it somewhat, yes. The $90 gets lent out--and where does it end up? In someone else's bank deposit. Then $81 of that gets lent out, and ends up--in yet another bank deposit. And so on...

At the end of this process, your original deposit has been multiplied by the reciprocal of whatever the reserve requirement is. So a 10% reserve means a multiplier of 1/.01 = 10. So your original deposit of $100 turns into a total of $1000. (So I shouldn't have said that your $100 turns into an additional $1000 lent out--I should have said the total money supply is $1000.)

Remember also that, even though $90 of your $100 was lent out, you can still walk into the bank and withdraw the $100 any time; you don't have to wait until whoever borrowed the $90 pays it back. The same is true of all the other deposits spawned by the $90 that is borrowed, and the $81 borrowed against that, and so on... So, again, the final effect of your depositing $100 is that the total money supply is $1000.

> you can still walk into the bank and withdraw the $100 any time

This is true, but if everyone did this at once it would constitute a run on the bank and it would fall under its reserve ratio. Not to mention the amount of money in the banking system is far far more than physical currency in print.

This is part of why some types of accounts (trading accounts etc.) require a few days to clear transactions. The expansion of the money supply is throughout the banking system and not just cash and deposits.

> This is true, but if everyone did this at once it would constitute a run on the bank and it would fall under its reserve ratio.

Yes, it would. So what? That isn't what stops bank runs from happening. What stops them from happening (now) is that people believe that their deposits are "guaranteed" by the government, so there's no need to go rushing to the bank and withdraw notes every time the economy takes a downturn. Before that guarantee was in place, there were indeed bank runs, and for the very reason I gave.

> the amount of money in the banking system is far far more than physical currency in print.

Yes, that's definitely true. And it's also true that most transactions, even for individuals, are not done in physical notes any more; they're done electronically (with debit cards or credit cards or wire transfers or whatever). So someone doesn't have to walk into the bank and withdraw their $100 in physical notes; they can do it any place, any time.

> And it's also true that most transactions, even for individuals, are not done in physical notes any more; they're done electronically (with debit cards or credit cards or wire transfers or whatever). So someone doesn't have to walk into the bank and withdraw their $100 in physical notes; they can do it any place, any time.

The difference between a credit card and a debit card is extremely relevant here. You can't run a bank with a credit card.

> You can't run a bank with a credit card.

Not when you make a credit card purchase, no. But you can when you electronically transfer funds from your bank account to pay the credit card bill.

I've heard this many times but never understood it. How is there $190 of things that work like money? It seems like $10 of the original $100 is locked up, and only $90 is available in for purchasing goods; the owner cant use his money like money (only the assurance of "having" it, not the property of buying anything with it) -- only the person who ultimately gets lended that money can.

Because we aren't trading actual goods, but notes that are "guaranteed" to be worth something. That's fiat money. You aren't trading actual gold coins, or even coins or notes guaranteed to represent a specific amount of gold or silver, but notes guaranteed to worth something as long as well still believe in them. It's a system of trust, and if enough people distrusted that the notes were worth anything, it would collapse (as has happened in other countries in the past).

So, even if an entity had $1 in reserve, but gave you notes representing $1,000,000, that money is valid as long as both the person you are trying to pay with it trusts that the issuing entity will honor the note, and it is worth the trade being offered (services, goods, etc). It might not be a good idea to trust that entity, but if the system persists long enough, and the entity makes enough money on fees and interest to actually cover the extravagant lending before people try to claim the notes, then in the end it was (or may be, depending on the parties involved) a net success. The issuing entity made money on the loan, the person taking out the loan was able to use it to provide needed liquidity (hopefully leveraged to make their situation better), and the person paid with the notes was able to redeem them at the issuing entity, or use them with other people successfully.

What we have currently is that the government issues, but does not want to be responsible for vetting individual loans, so only loans to large entities that then re-lend (and these lenders may take deposits as a bank or have other sources of cash to lend out). They also require these lending entities keep a portion of the amount they lend in reserve (the $1 from above), but at a certain percentage rate such that they expect in most instances the re-lending institution can weather most cases of increased demand to make good on the money for their loans (otherwise a lender could over-leverage themselves with far too much lent to deal with even normal economic events).

Imagine the following scenario:

Person A deposits $100 in the bank.

Person B receives a loan of $70 from the bank. Just to make the example easier, their only depositor is person A.

The bank now "has" $30, of which $100 is in person A's account.

Person A buys groceries, writing a check (yep!) to the store for $80. Their account has $100 in it, so they're fine. They've spent $80.

Person B also buys groceries, with cash. They give the store $40. The store now has $120, $40 in cash and $80 owed by the bank. They can spend their $120 in turn. There's no $70 spending limit imposed by the amount of the loan to person B. Person A had no trouble spending their money like money.

Some comparisons you might find of interest:

- The store ends up with more money ($120) than existed at the beginning of the scenario ($100). This is possible because the bank created an extra $70, and 120 < 100 + 70.

- The money the bank owes the store is more than the amount of the loan it gave to person B. This is largely a pointless comparison, but does illustrate that more money is available to spend ($170) than was loaned out ($70). From an accounting perspective, the bank started out owing $100 (to person A) when A deposited that amount, and ended up owing the same $100, of which $20 to A and $80 to the store.

Thats a good description. I may just be getting hung up on (meaningless?) semantics, but its still not quite the same as money but more like credit -- even though $170 is in play, nobody can actually go and get $170 dollars (well, other people's deposits at the bank notwithstanding). I guess fiat is also credit in a sense; but I wonder if the scenario somewhat conflates credit and money. That is I wonder if the bank "expanding credit" really means anything, or if that's simply the nature of credit itself. Thanks for the comments.

> even though $170 is in play, nobody can actually go and get $170 dollars

This is running the bank. As long as everyone uses a bank account, it's not a problem. If the depositors all try to withdraw their money in cash, the bank will be immediately destroyed, because it doesn't have the cash.

As explained in It's a Wonderful Life:

> You're thinking of this place all wrong. As if I had the money back in a safe. The money's not here. Your money's in Joe's house...right next to yours. And in the Kennedy house, and Mrs. Macklin's house, and a hundred others. Why, you're lending them the money to build, and then, they're going to pay it back to you as best they can.

A lot of work gets done without cashing out the money banks create.

What are the properties of "money", as conceived of by you, that "credit" does not share?

>Where does the rest of the money that's lent out come from?

Thin air, and there's nothing special about it. Banks do it, and so do normal people, everyday.

> so do normal people, everyday

Really? Normal people can lend money they don't actually have? How does that work?

If you mean that normal people can create wealth, of course they can. But that's not what we're talking about here.

>How does that work?

They create liabilities; IOUs. Just like you can. And there's no limit to how many you are allowed to create, beyond your creditworthiness in the eyes of the party to the exchange.

> They create liabilities; IOUs.

Suppose I give you an IOU for $100. Can you go and buy groceries with it? Or even more to the point, can you pay your taxes with it?

That depends on whether the party to my transaction accepts your IOU. Most likely, they would not. But they would accept the IOUs of the FRB. That's why we use them.

There's nothing special about dollars, except that they are widely accepted in exchange and accepted by the government by mandate.

> That depends on whether the party to my transaction accepts your IOU. Most likely, they would not.

Correct. They have a choice about whether to accept your IOU or not (and, as you say, they will most likely choose not to). You have no way to force them to.

(In the case of paying taxes, the other party is the government, and they definitely won't accept your IOU; you have to pay your taxes in the government's fiat currency.)

> they would accept the IOUs of the FRB

Because they don't have a choice; by law everyone has to accept Federal Reserve Notes (I use that term because I don't agree with using the term "IOU" to refer to them, for reasons which I have argued in other subthreads and don't want to rehash here) as legal tender. And the government can back up that law with legitimate force, because it's the government. That's why having a system where the government prints money is different from a system where private entities print money.

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