[danielmarkbruce]

This is a pretty awful doc. While technically it's not wrong, it doesn't continue to follow the flow long enough. The example given of "creating money" by creating a balance in someone's account is meaningless. In practice, the money is almost immediately sent to... the seller of the house. They may then go pay off their mortgage at their bank... and nothing much has changed.

I can "create money" too, out of thin air. I'll create a line of credit for you. $10,000. Boom, you have money to spend. I made it out of nothing. You have an account with me for $10,000. Problems arise when you actually go to spend it. Do I have enough assets so I can in fact send the money to the seller of the tractor you just purchased? It just became more concrete.

The idea banks make money out of thin air is a stupid idea, it sounds clever but does nothing except muddy the waters. Nobody used to say the local grocer was "creating money out of thin air" when they created a line of credit. In both cases they have enabled more economic activity - and "creating money" as defined by big brains in economic departments at universities is just a fancy, abstract way of saying "enabled more economic activity by creating credit".

[neilwilson]

"Do I have enough assets so I can in fact send the money to the seller of the tractor you just purchased?"

Yes you do. Because it is just an internal transfer within the bank. From your account at the bank, to the sellers account at the bank.

If it is to another bank, then that destination bank becomes a depositor in the source bank, which creates a loan to the source bank and a new deposit for the seller is created in the destination bank.

The destination bank does this otherwise the seller will move their bank account in disgust to the source bank - who does promise to complete the transfer.

All very simple and the way it has been done for centuries.

It's all loans create deposits - book entries.

[danielmarkbruce]

How do you know if I have enough assets? I'm just some random finance source.

Sorry, this isn't how it works. To transfer to another bank the banks will adjust central bank balances. Look up how ACH works behind the scenes, or the equivalent in other jurisdictions.

As for "centuries", again, no. Clearing houses - look them up.

In general - if something sounds magical in finance, you have to dig deeper. There is no magic anywhere.

[neilwilson]

"How do you know if I have enough assets? I'm just some random finance source."

You have enough assets because you've just created a loan of precisely that amount secured against physical collateral. That's the asset.

Therefore I can take over the deposit you have created knowing I can claim against that collateral in the final analysis.

And therefore I can create a deposit for my customer of the same amount.

That's just wholesale deposits.

"To transfer to another bank the banks will adjust central bank balances. "

That's merely a collateral optimisation.

First understand how correspondent banking works, then move to central bank clearing houses.

You'll find that a central bank is nothing more than banks swapping net liabilities with each other. The end result will always be that banks will lend and borrow from each other, and they do that or they lose customers.

A central bank has to accommodate the clearing process, or it can't maintain its interest rate. It can only set price or quantity, not both.

There's no magic, just the fact that a set of banks have pegged their liabilities to each other and one of them acts as a clearing house. It's all just loans and deposits within that.

[danielmarkbruce]

Who said anything about physical collateral?

I can make an unsecured line of credit available to you, and until you try to draw on it, you don't know if I have the ability to fund it. Same problem if the loan is supposed to be secured by your car. There is no magic you can come up with that changes that. Now if you are smart, you'll have done some diligence on me, and I might have a credit rating you can look up. Or someone in your org might be tasked with analyzing the credit and liquidity risks of all their counterparts. If it worked like magic, no one would bother doing this... but they do.

Correspondent banking makes up a tiny percentage of bank to bank settlements. "merely collateral optimization" makes the central bank role sound almost meaningless. Having credit risk and liquidity problems is kind of a big deal.

As for the comments on what the central bank is doing - it doesn't change the fact that banks can't make money out of thin air. If you look at the link above/below for WFC's balance sheet - every asset on their books is funded by real liabilities (plus some equity).

[neilwilson]

"Who said anything about physical collateral?"

Anybody who is actually making a loan, rather than playing rhetorical games.

Banks are discount houses. They allow us to spend real things.

Except for the bank serving government, which discounts the power to tax.

[danielmarkbruce]

Credit cards are not secured by collateral. A good chunk of corporate loans are unsecured. Just take a look at a real balance sheet of a real bank. Wells Fargo has over $50 bill of just credit card loans. No collateral.

A statement isn't a "game" just because it's inconvenient.

Go through the balance sheet of one of the banks. You'll learn a lot. It will become real instead of some theoretical thing. You'll see how the assets are funded by the liabilities (deposits). You'll see that banks really can't make up money out of thin air.

Here is a simple, real, publicly listed bank in Hawaii:

https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/36377/000155...

Go to page 100 and check out the balance sheet. They have about 13 bill of loans out. They own a little over 8 bill of mortgage backed securities. Their total deposits are about 21 bill. Is this some strange coincidence? Of course it isn't.