HOW BANKS CREATE MONEY
OUT OF NOTHING
You Must Learn How Banks Create Money or Your Freedom is Threatened.
The following is from mainstream economics textbook Success in Economics by Derek Lobley B.A. (London: John Murray Publishers Ltd, 1978 edition), which was part of the "Success Studybooks" series. It was intended to be "appropriate to the Economics syllabuses of many of the professional bodies such as ... the Institute of Bankers". It is published verbatim (but with emphases added) from ch.17, pp. 205-206.
Let us imagine an economy in which there is only one bank. Soon after beginning business it finds that individuals and firms have placed $10,000 with it for safe-keeping. Its balance sheet (ignoring the shareholders' capital or property owned by the institution) would appear as follows:
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The balance sheet is in effect a photograph of the institution's position at a particular point in time. The liabilities show the amounts that may be called upon to provide to customers and the assets show the cash and other resources available to meet liabilities.
At this stage it is quite clear that the bank has sufficient cash in its till to meet any demands made by its customers.
In practice customers prefer to settle their debts with each other by cheque, ordering the transfering of money from one account to another. Thus if Adam and Brown have each deposited $500, and Adam owes Brown $100, he can settle his debt by making instructions to reduce his account by $100 and to increase Brown's by the same amount. No cash changes hands; the bank still has obligations to its customers of $10,000; there has simply been a slight readjustment to those obligations.
If all the depositors were always prepared to settle their debts in this way the bank could forget all about its holdings of cash. Customers will, however, need to draw out a certain amount of cash each week to make small payments (it is not usual to write cheques for very small amounts) and to pay those people who prefer not to use the banking system.
If the bank discovers that, at the most, the weekly withdrawal of cash amounts to 10 per cent of total deposits, and that this is quickly re-deposited by traders accepting cash payments from customers, then the most cash needed to meet demands from customers with deposits of $10,000 is actually only $1000.
Alternatively we may take the view that with cash in hand of $10,000 the bank can afford liabilities of $100,000.
In this case let us imagine a customer, Mr Clark, who asks for a loan of $1000. The manager is agreeable and opens an account for him with a credit balance of $1000. Mr Clark can now write cheques to the value of $1000 although he has not deposited any money; he simply promises to repay the $1000 plus interest, having probably offered up some security. The bank's balance sheet (2) now shows a different picture:
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There is now insufficient cash to supply all the customers if they wished to withdraw their deposits, but the manager knows that the most that is likely to be withdrawn is $1100.
He will, therefore, be prepared to go on making loans (or creating credit, which is the same thing) until the cash that is held is equivalent to only 10 per cent of deposits (as per Balance Sheet 3):
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So far as customers are concerned the standing of their account is the same whether they have actually deposited cash to open the account or whether it has been created by a loan. When they spend their money the recipient has no means of knowing whether or not they originally deposited cash.
Thus in creating credit, the money supply has been increased.
Source: http://www.prosperityuk.com
From http://www.fdrs.org/banks.html
image - http://www.usmint.gov/kids/coinNews/images/bankNotesCoins.gif
It's all funny money, gold standard or not, money, the symbol is the
biggest myth in the world, and people are willing to die for this myth
because most of us have all socially accepted to buy into the lie of it as
we continue to determine our self worth as people by the amount of the
funny stuff (money) that we have in our possession.... The bigger the lie,
the more people have a tendency to BELIEVE and the more beliefs that we
have, the greater tendency we have to ignore what's real,and I think this
is the true meaning of our collective and individual insanity.
You are proof that some can see beyond the illusion. Money doesn't
exist,but greed certainly does.
People like to say that greed is in our nature, and although that may be
true to a certain extent, I don't totally agree. I think that the
observation of greed is in our environment, an environment that is based on
a value system that depends on the artificial creation of scarcity
determining conditions... In other words, the very real sense of scarcity
automatically provokes greed. Abundance and real FREEDOM is the primary
solution to wiping out roughly 95% of all greed related crimes against man
and nature.
Couldn't agree more with this and most of your other perceptive comments.
The advent of abundance will do away with any need for money.
Yes, and we can measure this abundance of resources that we ALL depend on
for our survival, ie... A couple of years ago, I was reading the data
sheets put out by the US department of agricultural and I found out the
magnitudes of what we were producing i.e. We produced something on the
scale of 1.85 billion metric tons of wheat alone in this country in one
calender year, and then I thought, why is it that roughly 12,000 children
died of some form of malnutrition in the same year we produced so much
wheat? And the answer became obvious too me, we agreed to waste the wheat
in order to continue placing a price on it. We burn peach fields, we pay
farmers not to grow anything at all, we also paid farmers to throw milk
away during the great depression. We plan and or engineer waste in the
products we produce, all for the purpose of artificially creating the
illusion of scarcity to keep all of us suckers paying and playing a
monopoly game that is set to self destruct.
Do you know that on average for every 1000 currency units (e.g. US$) in a
bank account there are only 20 currency units in bills? Meaning that 98% of
all money in bank accounts is not covered by an I.O.U. bank note. So when
the monetary system collapses, only 25 of your savings are guaranteed!!!
This is the greatest robbery in mankind's history.