Hacker News Reader

Comment by hackerguy99 | Hacker News Reader

How else can money be created except through credit?

Direct reserve emission by the central bank. In practice, the central bank can just give some reserve to the governement account.

..or they can give it directly to people. There is an initiative for Europe that wants exactly that, Quantitive Easing for People. I love the idea and am sure it would do more for the economy than just pushing banks to lend more money.

That could be a good idea, even though we don't really know the impact it will have on inflation. Imho, the impact would be close to zero in nowadays economy where the lack of demand is much more of a problem than an hypothetical shortage of goods. In the long run though, the demand would catch up and the supply could be the limit, like it was after the first oil crisis.

Personnally, I'd rather give the money to the governement like we did in the keynesian golden age, because it fuels the development of infrastructures, housing and social security. And at our point in history, it could be used to transition to a sustainable society. But that's because I don't trust the market on this, I'm kind of a socialist.

> am sure it would do more for the economy than just pushing banks to lend more money.

This is such a failure (esp. in the EU) I don't see how I could disagree with you on this.

They did it in Australia during the GFC. Spent 10 billion dollars giving 12 million people $900 each.

Share market jumped, retailers rolled out significant sales. People bought TVs.

The problem with this idea is that the central bank doesn't have a list of bank accounts for the entire population and even if they did not everyone has a bank account.

It's more likely that negative interest rates will be passed onto consumer bank accounts by elmininating cash.

If money is given directly to people then that money will disappear in non-productive spending such as luxury goods and services, which typically mean that the nation's trade balance would suffer greatly.

And what prevents the arbitrary extension of credit?

The present primary reliance on fractional reserve monetary is not a carved-in-stone requirement of financial systems, only the present norm.

If you're interested in ideas and thoughts on money, I'd suggest William Stanley Jevons writing as a starting point for modern views. A. Mitchell Innis's "What is Money?" (1913) is not entirely mainstream, but strikes me as among the more insightful enquiries I've read:

https://www.community-exchange.org/docs/what%20is%20money.ht...

I'd stumbled across that here: http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2013/09/money-created-ove...

> The present primary reliance on fractional reserve monetary is not a carved-in-stone requirement of financial systems, only the present norm.

Their is no fractionnal reserve banking in the modern world anymore. And circa 2007, virtually nothing prevented the infinit expansion of credit, with the result we all know.

If you want to learn more about these topics, the keen-krugman debate (more of a controversy than a civil debate) a few years ago was really enlightening.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2010/201041/index.h...

The St. Louis Fed tends to have the largest set of articles on economic policy, generally.

Here are 632 results for "fractional reserve":

https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Astlouisfe...

And limiting to 2010 and subesequently, 27. None declaring the concept dead.

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=site%3Astlouisfed.org+...

> And limiting to 2010

The second paper on the page is from 1968 …

In the US, there is no limit anymore on how much credit you can lend given the amount of reserve you have, the reserve requirement is on deposit not credit lent.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_requirement

Please cite your source(s) that reserves and reserve requirements no longer exist, are no longer linked to money supply, and are no longer Fed policy.

Thank you.

It can be created backed up by assets instead of reputation though.

Via being backed to some tangible good, eg gold.

Or bitcoin ! Wait, this is ridiculous we have like two centuries showing us that commodity currency is a failure in an industrial economy.

I would not be so fast in that conclusion. There is actually research that indicates that the opposite might be true:

http://saifedean.com/Saifedean%20Ammous%20The%20Bitcoin%20St...

A slowdown a la Thiel due to fundamentally flawed monetary policies.

Thanks for the paper, but having skimmed through I don't think the word research is appropriate for this, it's more of a compilation of autrian propaganda than anything else.

Gold standard failed, no matter what libertarians like to fantasize about it.

Groan.. I think we need a version of Godwin's law for bitcoin

Reply on news.ycombinator.com