[digikata]

In theory that money in a savings account or investment vehicle gets circulated back into the rest of the economy, but I think what we're seeing is that cash is tied up in some sort of buffer/holding effect in the financial sector, basically accumulating in ineffective places. The bulk of the money certainly doesn't seem to be circulating through the hands of individuals where it would likely spur more economic activity than we're seeing now.

[jmorrow977]

This is a really interesting observation. I've never heard someone mention a "buffer/holding effect" before, but that makes a lot of sense.

I wonder if it's something like... the average individual spends half of whatever cash they have available every year... but the average business that takes investment lets 6 to 12 months of it sit in accounts. I realize the bank would then loan against the money in those accounts, but is it "turtles all the way down"?

I'll have to refresh my understanding of fractional reserve banking, but I don't think a loan from Bank A being put into Bank B and so on can lead to infinite money supply. If I remember correctly it somehow leads to some multiple of the input money being generated. Here's a Wikipedia article about it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_multiplier#Reserves_firs...

At some point all the institutions sitting on their money eventually does result in that money being sat on, and not being circulated through the economy.

[icebraining]

That's the textbook model of money creation, but it's outdated. See "Money creation in the modern economy", by the central Bank of England: http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarte...

Money creation in practice differs from some popular misconceptions — banks do not act simply as intermediaries, lending out deposits that savers place with them, and nor do they ‘multiply up’ central bank money to create new loans and deposits. (...)

Whenever a bank makes a loan, it simultaneously creates a matching deposit in the borrower’s bank account, thereby creating new money.