[dools]

Can you describe how a bank uses money that it has to originate loans?

EDIT: note that this paragraph (and the one preceding it) directly contradicts what you are saying:

This description of money creation contrasts with the notion that banks can only lend out pre-existing money, outlined in the previous section. Bank deposits are simply a record of how much the bank itself owes its customers. So they are a liability of the bank, not an asset that could be lent out. A related misconception is that banks can lend out their reserves. Reserves can only be lent between banks, since consumers do not have access to reserves accounts at the Bank of England.

[imtringued]

One thing that should raise an obvious flag is that if the bank lends your bank account balance, why isn't it telling you that you cannot withdraw or spend it? After all, that money is supposed to be in your or someone else's bank account! It can't be in both simultaneously. The only conclusion is that your bank account isn't actually your money but a bank's promise to pay you money and those promises are obviously created by the bank. The only confusion is over whether highly regulated promises that people use in their day to day activity as money substitute can be considered money or not.

The classic "bank takes your deposit and lends it out" only applies to certificates of deposit, after all, you have no access to that money. You can't transfer or withdraw it until the agreed date.

[baobabKoodaa]

> Can you describe how a bank uses money that it has to originate loans?

Yes.

If I take a loan out of a bank in physical banknotes, then the bank physically loses the amount of banknotes that I physically receive. Physical banknotes are not duplicated. If I take out 100 euros in physical banknotes, then the bank loses the corresponding 100 euros in physical banknotes. The bank does not magically create physical banknotes out of thin air.

If I take a loan out of a bank in the form of electronic transfer to another bank, then usually one of 2 things happen:

1. The receiving bank requires the sending bank to settle all transfers that occurred throughout a timespan such as 1 day, by transferring reserves held at the central bank. For example, if the net outflow from bank A to bank B is +2M, then bank B would require bank A to transfer 2M of reserves to settle the transfers. Note that also in this case bank A loses the amount of money that it lent to me. Money wasn't duplicated. It was transferred out of the bank.

or

2. The receiving bank B has looked through the books of sending bank A, they have a prior relationship, and bank B provides an unsecured loan to bank A. Note that if bank A actually had 0 money anywhere, then bank B wouldn't want to provide bank A an unsecured loan. In this case bank A does not lose physical banknotes, and does not lose reserves held at the central bank, but they still have to record the unsecured loan. In an accounting sense, they didn't magically gain "free money" by providing a loan to their customer.

> This description of money creation contrasts with the notion that banks can only lend out pre-existing money, outlined in the previous section. Bank deposits are simply a record of how much the bank itself owes its customers. So they are a liability of the bank, not an asset that could be lent out

I believe this is referring to the creation of the accounting entry. It's true in the most pedantic sense, which is incredibly misleading and unhelpful. Yes, when you type a number into a computer, you can type any number. If I were to open a business where I operate like a bank, taking deposits from people and loaning money to people, and I were to keep a ledger of how much money each person has at their "accounts" with me, I could type any number I want in that ledger. Let's say I type in "9999999999999 dollars". Sure, why not. If your argument is that one can type in any number they want on a computer, then that's true, but it's not a useful argument to make.

Do you think that a bank which has NO MONEY is able to (in a practical sense) create infinite money out of thin air? Sure it can type "9999999999999 dollars" on a computer, but that wouldn't be "real money" in any practical sense, because you wouldn't be able to exchange it for goods and services.

Follow-up question: if you genuinely believe this to be possible, then why isn't anybody doing that? Surely there are many people working at banks who would like to collude with their friends and family to create infinite money. If you believe that to be possible, why has it literally never happened?

[qnt]

> Furthermore, it's not clear to me how you believe that the BoE article contradicts what I'm saying. I'm under the impression that you (along with most other people) are simply misunderstanding what you are reading here.

The contradiction seems fundamental. You're suggesting existing deposits facilitate the creation of loans. The entire BoE article is a repeated attempt at showing how loans create deposits.

> Do you think that a bank which has NO MONEY is able to (in a practical sense) create infinite money out of thin air? Sure it can type "9999999999999 dollars" on a computer, but that wouldn't be "real money" in any practical sense, because you wouldn't be able to exchange it for goods and services.

That's ... exactly how it works. If the bank believes you are good for 9999999999999 dollars over the term of the loan, they put +x in your demand deposit account, and -x in your loan account (and from bank's view those are respectively the bank's own liabilities and assets).

You can then go and send that money (demand deposit) somewhere else to buy a house or whatever (goods and services). Bank A and bank B both have banking licences, which means they mutually trust using each other's customer demand deposit accounts as 'money'.

You mentioned you wouldn't be able to exchange that for goods and services - but that's exactly what happens. You then need to find those dollars and pay back the loan eventually from a job or whatever, or else you go bankrupt.

If you would like to turn that demand deposit into hard cash to keep under the mattress, your commercial bank will send your demand deposit to the commercial bank's account with the central bank, and the central bank will truck over some cash in return.

I know you get this since you write it as IOUs in the article. What I'm trying to get across is that nothing has to precede the creation of the IOU, whereas I think you say an initial deposit of government-issued central bank money (cash) is required.

> Follow-up question: if you genuinely believe this to be possible, then why isn't anybody doing that? Surely there are many people working at banks who would like to collude with their friends and family to create infinite money. If you believe that to be possible, why has it literally never happened?

Try it :) I think odds are you end up in jail.

And if a bank (or crypto exchange!) is in the business of writing crap to counterparties who can't pay them back, the bank probably goes out of business once everyone realizes the bank assets (loans) are garbage.

Trying to get a loan without intention of paying it back is bank fraud. It happens and occasionally for very large sums; https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/papas-mazco...

Further, regulators like to see banks hold capital against their assets to make sure they can fill the gap when some loans inevitably go bad. That capital could be retained earnings, shareholder capital, etc etc. It just doesn't have to come from an initial deposit.

[baobabKoodaa]

> What I'm trying to get across is that nothing has to precede the creation of the IOU, whereas I think you say an initial deposit of government-issued central bank money (known as cash).

I'll start responding to this because I think it's a point where we agree: yes, you can type any number in a computer and call it "money". Yes, I agree nothing has to precede the creation of numbers on a computer. However, in order for those numbers to actually "be money" in a practical sense where someone could exchange them to goods and services, the bank has to actually own some real money. If the bank literally has 0 reserves, then the money that it creates on the computer will not be in practice exchangeable to goods and services.

> > Do you think that a bank which has NO MONEY is able to (in a practical sense) create infinite money out of thin air?

> That's ... exactly how it works. [...] You can then go and send that money (demand deposit) somewhere else to buy a house or whatever (goods and services). Bank A and bank B both have banking licences, which means they mutually trust using each other's customer demand deposit accounts as 'money'.

If bank A tries to send 9999999999999 dollars to bank B, bank B doesn't simply trust that bank A is good for it. The transfer would not actually go through in the real world. Please produce a single example where this has happened: a single example where a bank had 0 reserves, created >9999999999999 USD out of thin air, and then somebody exchanged that money to goods and services. A single example is enough to prove me wrong. What you're claiming to be possible has never actually happened.

> If you would like to turn that demand deposit into hard cash to keep under the mattress, your commercial bank will send your demand deposit to the commercial bank's account with the central bank, and the central bank will truck over some cash in return.

So in this scenario we have a bank that has 0 reserves in the central bank, and the bank then goes to the central bank and says "I would like to withdraw 9999999999999 dollars in cash, please". This scenario is comparable to you opening up a checking account at a (regular) bank with 0 dollars in it and then walking into the bank saying "I would like to withdraw 9999999999999 dollars in cash, please". The bank would tell you "sorry, your account has 0 dollars, which is less than the 9999999999999 you are trying to withdraw, so we can't make the withdrawal". This is exactly what the central bank would respond to a bank that is holding 0 dollars in reserves at the central bank while trying to withdraw an amount greater than 0 dollars. Even if the bank was asking the central bank to produce $5, the central bank would say no, $5 > $0, you can't withdraw money you don't have.

Edit: to add clarity, I'm saying that this specific part of your claims is wrong: "your commercial bank will send your demand deposit to the commercial bank's account with the central bank". To the extent that the commercial bank is able to "create money out of thin air", it isn't the type of money that the central bank would accept as a deposit. You can fact check this.

> Trying to get a loan without intention of paying it back is bank fraud. It happens and occasionally for very large sums [...]

That's completely unrelated to this discussion. Yes, a bank can loan out money (money that it has) to a fraudster who has no intention of paying back the loan. The question we have here is, can a bank that has 0 money, can it magically create 9999999999999 dollars out of thin air and loan it out. That's unrelated to whether the loanee will eventually pay it back or not.

> The contradiction seems fundamental. You're suggesting existing deposits facilitate the creation of loans. The entire BoE article is a repeated attempt at showing how loans create deposits.

You present these things as mutually exclusive - they're not. Existing deposits facilitate the creation of loans, and the creation of loans expands the amount of existing deposits. Both of these things can be true at the same time, and they are true at the same time.

[dools]

> If I take a loan out of a bank in physical banknotes, then the bank physically loses the amount of banknotes that I physically receive. Physical banknotes are not duplicated

The withdrawl of money from a bank as notes/coins is a different operation than the origination of a loan. When banks originate a loan, the first thing that happens is that you see the balance appear in your account. You can then choose to withdraw that in cash.

> If I take a loan out of a bank in the form of electronic transfer to another bank, then usually one of 2 things happen:

Again, the origination of the loan and the transfer of settlement funds to another bank are separate operations. You cannot take out a loan in the form of electronic transfer to another bank.

> 1. The receiving bank requires ... they didn't magically gain "free money" by providing a loan to their customer.

Agreed, so what you've described so far is that banks need reserve balances sufficient to cover interbank settlements and cash withdrawls, and banks do not receive money by originating loans.

What they do when they originate loans is provide an asset to the customer (a demand deposit balance) in exchange for a liability of the customer (the loan agreement).

> I believe this is referring to the creation of the accounting entry

All "money" is simply an accounting entry.

> It's true in the most pedantic sense, which is incredibly misleading and unhelpful.

It's true in every sense, and is very helpful if you want to understand how banking and money work.

> Yes, when you type a number into a computer, you can type any number. If I were to open a business where I operate like a bank, taking deposits from people and loaning money to people

You haven't described the mechanism by which a bank can use deposits it has taken from customers to originate loans to other customers.

> and I were to keep a ledger of how much money each person has at their "accounts" with me, I could type any number I want in that ledger. Let's say I type in "9999999999999 dollars". Sure, why not. If your argument is that one can type in any number they want on a computer, then that's true, but it's not a useful argument to make.

Yes it is, because it's an accurate description of how banks originate loans.

> Do you think that a bank which has NO MONEY is able to (in a practical sense) create infinite money out of thin air? Sure it can type "9999999999999 dollars" on a computer, but that wouldn't be "real money" in any practical sense, because you wouldn't be able to exchange it for goods and services.

Deposits created by a bank are good for all transactions within that bank. If all people were customers of the same bank (some sort of "central bank" if you will) and all currency were digital, then the bank could indeed create infinity dollars without liquidity risk, because all transactions would occur within their own accounting system with no external settlements.

> Follow-up question: if you genuinely believe this to be possible, then why isn't anybody doing that? Surely there are many people working at banks who would like to collude with their friends and family to create infinite money. If you believe that to be possible, why has it literally never happened?

The reason it has never happened in precisely the way you outline above is quite simply regulation. But also, it does happen, fraud in loan origination isn't that rare. Here's a recent example of a banker originating $16m in loans to Paul Manafort in exchange for a shot at working with Trump:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/23/banker-indicted-for-loaning-...

But let's imagine that a bank did attempt to operate without any settlement balances. What would that look like?

It would originate loans by adding $9,999,999,999 to someone's account, and since they're not the only bank, the person has the choice to spend that money wherever they please and some of that money will end up being withdrawn as notes/coins or transferred to another bank.

The originator of the loan would then have to borrow settlement balances sufficient to cover withdrawals in notes/coins and cover interbank settlements. As a result it would be paying interest, which puts up its costs. Now let's imagine all banks did that, starting from $0 on day one.

What happens? The central bank, which is the lender of last resort, lends money to all those banks and they have to pay interest on it, but in lending the money, the central bank has created reserve balances. Now, the bank that is most successful at attracting people to create accounts receives more reserve balances than the others, which they can use to pay back the central bank, thus reducing their costs. If they continue being more successful, they will eventually not only have paid back the central bank, but will have excess reserves which they can use to satisfy future interbank settlements and cash withdrawls and they may even have so much in reserve that they can compete with the central bank to lend those reserves to other banks (at an interest rate just below what the central bank charges -- ringing any bells?) which makes them EVEN MORE money.

So the reason banks like to attract deposits is that it makes them more profitable.

Of course, there are also regulations and capital requirements that are imposed on banks, and the government also creates net financial assets in the banking sector by issuing bonds on the primary market (which is a vestigial way of overt money creation kept in place because it is convenient for a bunch of rich people to get richer, but that's another story).

But fundamentally, we could have a banking system that operates exactly as I described where ALL money creation occurred only through the origination of private credit and subsequent lending of reserve balances by the central bank. It would be a horrible economy with massive inequality and instability, but you could do it, if you so desired. The reason we regulate it is to remove some of that instability (removing the inequality, we're still working on!)

[baobabKoodaa]

> the origination of the loan and the transfer of settlement funds to another bank are separate operations

Correct. The first operation ("writing a number on a computer") can occur regardless of how much money the bank has. But if operation 2 is not possible, then the number that was created in operation 1 is de facto not money. Remember, we're arguing whether the bank needs to have physical banknotes and central bank reserves in order to "create money" when originating a loan. We're not arguing about whether the bank can type in random numbers on a computer - on that point we are already in agreement. The disagreement concerns whether/when those numbers can be considered to be "money".

> All "money" is simply an accounting entry.

Excluding physical banknotes, yes that is true, but you are implying the reverse of that statement to be true and it's not true at all: all accounting entries are not "money". If I open an excel sheet right now and type in "99999999", that is an accounting entry, but it is not money. Likewise, if a troubled bank has completely ran out of capital and is not supported by structures like the FDIC, and it proceeds to type in "9999999" as an accounting entry for the account balance of the chairman's wife, that is not "money". The chairman's wife will not be able to exchange it to goods and services - hence, it is not "money".

> Deposits created by a bank are good for all transactions within that bank. If all people were customers of the same bank (some sort of "central bank" if you will) and all currency were digital, then the bank could indeed create infinity dollars without liquidity risk, because all transactions would occur within their own accounting system with no external settlements.

Yes, central banks have the ability to create practically infinite amounts of real money from thin air. The argument doesn't concern the central bank's ability to create money, it concerns a commercial/retail bank's ability to create money in the process of originating loans.

> > Follow-up question: if you genuinely believe [a bank which has NO MONEY is able to (in a practical sense) create infinite money out of thin air] to be possible, then why isn't anybody doing that? Surely there are many people working at banks who would like to collude with their friends and family to create infinite money. If you believe that to be possible, why has it literally never happened?

> it does happen, fraud in loan origination isn't that rare. Here's a recent example of a banker originating $16m in loans to Paul Manafort in exchange for a shot at working with Trump:

Nope, that is not an example of a bank issuing an infinite amount of money while having literally zero money in reserves. That is an example of a bank which has >16M in reserves, then issuing loans for 16M. Nothing weird about that. Completely unrelated to what I was asking for. Show me a bank which has 0 reserves, then issues loans for billions of dollars, and then exchanges those billions to goods and services. You can't do that, because that has never happened, because it's not possible.

> But let's imagine that a bank did attempt to operate without any settlement balances. What would that look like? It would originate loans by adding $9,999,999,999 to someone's account, and since they're not the only bank, the person has the choice to spend that money wherever they please and some of that money will end up being withdrawn as notes/coins or transferred to another bank. The originator of the loan would then have to borrow settlement balances sufficient to cover withdrawals in notes/coins and cover interbank settlements. What happens? The central bank, which is the lender of last resort, lends money to all those banks and they have to pay interest on it, but in lending the money, the central bank has created reserve balances

No, the central bank would NOT provide a loan in this outrageous, obviously fraudulent instance. Again, you're claiming this to be possible, but it has never happened.

> But fundamentally, we could have a banking system that operates exactly as I described where ALL money creation occurred only through the origination of private credit and subsequent lending of reserve balances by the central bank. It would be a horrible economy with massive inequality and instability, but you could do it, if you so desired. The reason we regulate it is to remove some of that instability (removing the inequality, we're still working on!)

Now I'm confused. So the example you provided was not supposed to reflect reality? It was just a "we could in theory have a banking system like this"? Yes we could in theory, but in practice we don't. In practice normal banks need reserves in order to issue loans.

[dools]

> The first operation ("writing a number on a computer") can occur regardless of how much money the bank has. But if operation 2 is not possible, then the number that was created in operation 1 is de facto not money. Remember, we're arguing whether the bank needs to have physical banknotes and central bank reserves in order to "create money" when originating a loan. We're not arguing about whether the bank can type in random numbers on a computer - on that point we are already in agreement. The disagreement concerns whether/when those numbers can be considered to be "money".

I agree that money is a very ambiguous (and probably not very helpful) term, but insofar as we can consider the M1 money supply measure to be the quantity of money available in the economy at any given point in time (which is what the BoE paper is referring to when it says "money creation"), originating loans definitely creates money[0]. When you get a loan, the money lands in your demand deposit account, it's definitely "money" according to the definition of money being used in the BoE paper.

>> All "money" is simply an accounting entry. > Excluding physical banknotes, yes that is true

Minor point but I would include notes and coins as "entries" in the same accounting system, in the same way as receipts, invoices or cheques. Not really critical to the conversation though ...

> but you are implying the reverse of that statement to be true and it's not true at all: all accounting entries are not "money". If I open an excel sheet right now and type in "99999999", that is an accounting entry, but it is not money.

Well, they sort of are. I mean, any liability denominated in the state's unit of account is, in some way, money. This is the crux of Minsky's "Heirarchy of Money"[0]

For Minsky, there is nothing special or elusive about money. In fact, he says, "everyone can create money; the problem is to get it accepted" (1986, p. 228)[1]

> Likewise, if a troubled bank has completely ran out of capital and is not supported by structures like the FDIC, and it proceeds to type in "9999999" as an accounting entry for the account balance of the chairman's wife, that is not "money". The chairman's wife will not be able to exchange it to goods and services - hence, it is not "money".

Right, but banks are supported by those structures. That's what makes them banks. As we saw in 2008, the government went to extroardinary lengths to insure that even the most recklessly issued loans didn't result in banks becoming insolvent. Bill Black is definitely worth a listen to on this topic[2].

>> Follow-up question: ... Nope, that is not an example of a bank issuing an infinite amount of money while having literally zero money in reserves. That is an example of a bank which has >16M in reserves, then issuing loans for 16M. Nothing weird about that

Well, we don't really know what the reserve position of that bank was, and $16m was probably a relatively small amount relative to the overall capital position, but this is definitely an example of someone going outside of what would be considered normally regulated procedure (regulation being the only thing that separates "good" loans from "bad" loans) for personal gain which is why I thought it was relevant to your point.

>> But let's imagine that a bank did attempt to operate without any settlement balances ... No, the central bank would NOT provide a loan in this outrageous, obviously fraudulent instance. Again, you're claiming this to be possible, but it has never happened.

When a bank receives its license, it can immediately start both taking deposits and issuing loans. Banks lend money to each other all the time, and most loans from the central bank are against collateral such as government securities and other very liquid forms of capital[3] however the central bank will, under some circumstances, lend money to banks against the assets they have themselves created through loan origination[4].

So while my little thought experiment about "starting from $0" is not quite accurate, it's not that far off!

>> But fundamentally, we could have a banking system that operates exactly as I described ... > So the example you provided was not supposed to reflect reality? It was just a "we could in theory have a banking system like this"? Yes we could in theory, but in practice we don't. In practice normal banks need reserves in order to issue loans.

My example was intended to show you how banks hold reserves in order to make their loan operations more profitable. The point was that even if you started off with all banks at $0 in reserves and funded the entire operation using only central bank loans, you would end up with a system similar to what we have now where the primary reason banks need reserves is to increase profitability. It may be the case that a bank that had no reserves at all would go bust because it wouldn't be able to compete with other banks, but it's certainly not the case that they all need to attract reserve deposits equal to the amount of loans they want to originate. They only need sufficient reserves to satisfy net flows of funds and, because they're banks, they have access to the types of credit facilities they need in order to satisfy short term liquidity shortfalls.

In fact, there was a spectacular neobanking collapse in Australia recently:

"Xinja failed in part because it started taking deposits before it made loans. That meant it had to pay interest to customers before it was generating income."[5]

Banks don't need a certain level of reserves or even highly liquid government securities to satisfy capital adequacy requirements. If you look at the documentation around commencement of a bank and capital adequacy standards[6][7] you'll find a story that is much more complicated than simply "reserve funds". They look at all sorts of financial instruments able to "absorb losses" or "commitment of funds". These mean that you can have investors who have pledged to step in to satisfy liquidity requirements or provide collateral/security for loans from other banks and/or the central bank.

There is a difference between the "capital adequacy" requirements placed on banks and the imagined "reserve requirement". Bill Mitchell sets it out clearly:

"To understand why reserve requirements do no constrain lending you have to understand how a bank operates. Banks seek to attract credit-worthy customers to which they can loan funds to and thereby make profit. What constitutes credit-worthiness varies over the business cycle and so lending standards become more lax at boom times as banks chase market share (this is one of Minsky’s drivers).

These loans are made independent of the banks’ reserve positions. Depending on the way the central bank accounts for commercial bank reserves, the latter will then seek funds to ensure they have the required reserves in the relevant accounting period. They can borrow from each other in the interbank market but if the system overall is short of reserves these horizontal transactions will not add the required reserves.

In these cases, the bank will sell bonds back to the central bank or borrow outright through the device called the “discount window”. There is typically a penalty for using this source of funds. At the individual bank level, certainly the “price of reserves” may play some role in the credit department’s decision to loan funds. But the reserve position per se will not matter. So as long as the margin between the return on the loan and the rate they would have to borrow from the central bank through the discount window is sufficient, the bank will lend.

So the idea that reserve balances are required initially to “finance” bank balance sheet expansion via rising excess reserves is inapplicable. A bank’s ability to expand its balance sheet is not constrained by the quantity of reserves it holds or any fractional reserve requirements. The bank expands its balance sheet by lending. Loans create deposits which are then backed by reserves after the fact. The process of extending loans (credit) which creates new bank liabilities is unrelated to the reserve position of the bank."[8]

In other words, banks issue as much credit as they can to as many credit worthy customers as they can find, and separately look for ways to satisfy any regulatory requirements. It is the case that regulatory requirements will inform lending criteria but it's nowhere near as simple as "x% of reserves".

[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL

[1] https://www.levyinstitute.org/publications/the-hierarchy-of-...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQBIfSWDx9s

[3] https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2017/dec/2.html

[4] https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2020/sep/pdf/ma...

[5] https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/xinja-s-col...

[6] https://www.apra.gov.au/sites/default/files/2021-08/Guidelin...

[7] https://www.apra.gov.au/sites/default/files/2021-08/APS%2011...

[9] http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=9075

[baobabKoodaa]

I think that's the most prudently argued response I've got on HN.

It sounds like we are mostly in agreement, but we disagree on:

1. When something should or shouldn't be called "money"

2. Will the bank - in practice - lose its money-printing ability if it behaves extremely bad

Regarding point 1, I guess we're going to just agree to disagree.

Regarding point 2, it's up to you to provide a single counter-example and prove me wrong. Theoretical arguments won't cut it here.

I'll answer some individual points below:

> I agree that money is a very ambiguous (and probably not very helpful) term, but insofar as we can consider the M1 money supply measure to be the quantity of money available in the economy at any given point in time (which is what the BoE paper is referring to when it says "money creation"), originating loans definitely creates money[0]. When you get a loan, the money lands in your demand deposit account, it's definitely "money" according to the definition of money being used in the BoE paper.

The BoE paper wasn't describing the case where a troubled bank with 0 capital makes up infinite amount of demand deposits. If such a case were to happen in practice, automated systems might initially report the amount of circulating money as infinite, but very soon someone would "correct the error".

> When a bank receives its license, it can immediately start both taking deposits and issuing loans.

This might be as it is written in Australian law, but in practice no bank is going to receive a license if it has 0 capital when starting up. Sure, it doesn't need deposits to start lending, but it still needs reserves.

> Banks lend money to each other all the time, and most loans from the central bank are against collateral such as government securities and other very liquid forms of capital[3] however the central bank will, under some circumstances, lend money to banks against the assets they have themselves created through loan origination[4]. So while my little thought experiment about "starting from $0" is not quite accurate, it's not that far off!

Well, I'd say it's far off. We're comparing "normal bank issuing loans more or less prudently" to "bank with 0 capital issuing infinite money to the chairman's wife". I would argue that your typical central bank is willing to bail out most cases in the former category, while refusing to bail out any case in the latter category.

> It may be the case that a bank that had no reserves at all would go bust because it wouldn't be able to compete with other banks, but it's certainly not the case that they all need to attract reserve deposits equal to the amount of loans they want to originate.

I'm obviously not claiming that banks need reserve deposits equal to the amount of loans they originate. I'm saying that banks need some deposits to issue loans, and I'm saying that any one individual loan is never going to be larger than the amount of reserves held by the bank. The sum of all loans might be larger than the amount of reserves held, but no single individual loan is going to be.

> They only need sufficient reserves to satisfy net flows of funds and, because they're banks, they have access to the types of credit facilities they need in order to satisfy short term liquidity shortfalls.

If a bank issues a huge loan that the customer intends to withdraw from the bank, that can cause a short term liquidity shortfall. So if you're saying the bank needs sufficient reserves to cover for potential short term liquidity shortfalls, then I suppose we are in agreement over the main question in this debate.

> loans are made independent of the banks’ reserve positions [...] Loans create deposits which are then backed by reserves after the fact. The process of extending loans (credit) which creates new bank liabilities is unrelated to the reserve position of the bank."

I'd be to happy to accept a single counter-example where a bank with 0 reserves issues >999999999 dollars to a family friend who then exchanges it to goods and services. Just a single example of this, and I will say I was wrong. Without a single documented case of this happening, you are essentially claiming "this could happen in theory". That's different from "this is how the world actually is today". Many things could theoretically happen in the world, but they don't, and that's not how to world is. In practice banks are constrained in their loan-making by their reserves, even if you have 9 research papers that claim otherwise "in theory".

[dools]

> Regarding point 1, I guess we're going to just agree to disagree.

I actually agree with you really, I think the term money is terrible and leads to all sorts of misunderstandings about how the world works. But in the sense of the word being used in that BoE paper, bank loans create "money" as in "money supply" as it is measured in official documents.

> 2. Will the bank - in practice - lose its money-printing ability if it behaves extremely bad

I absolutely agree that bad behaviour will (in an ideal world!) lead to the loss of a banking license (although recent events point to the contrary, "To Big To Fail" and all that -- I think that banks should have gone bankrupt and people should have gone to jail after 2008!)

But, with regulation as it stands currently, not having enough reserves to remain liquid prior to originating a loan isn't bad behaviour. In some cases banks can have a negative balance as long as it's not negative for a sustained period of time (regulations differ between jurisdictions). Capital adequacy is not the same as a reserve ratio!

> If a bank issues a huge loan that the customer intends to withdraw from the bank, that can cause a short term liquidity shortfall. So if you're saying the bank needs sufficient reserves to cover for potential short term liquidity shortfalls, then I suppose we are in agreement over the main question in this debate.

I think the key here is the sequence of events, which is subtle but crucial.

Banks don't first take deposits equal to the amount of loans they wish to originate, and then subsequently go looking for people to whom they will originate loans with those reserves as a guarantee of their ability to ensure liquidity to satisfy net flows of funds.

They originate the loans and then separately go looking for whatever funds they need to satisfy their liquidity.

Capital requirements are far more complicated than simply having a reserve ratio. They can be things like commitments of funds subordinated to demand deposit liabilities. In other words capital can be a potential source of liquidity, rather than actual reserves sitting in your account.

They also borrow from each other and from the central bank, including with self securitisation.

> I'd be to happy to accept a single counter-example where a bank with 0 reserves issues >999999999 dollars to a family friend who then exchanges it to goods and services

It doesn't have to be fraudulent in order to fit what the BoE is saying. It just needs to be the case that banks aren't constrained by their deposits, but rather their capital which can take many forms. Reserves make their operations more profitable, and if they're unprofitable enough for long enough, they'll go bust. But the statement "banks lend out reserves" is demonstrably wrong.

> In practice banks are constrained in their loan-making by their reserves, even if you have 9 research papers that claim otherwise "in theory".

I've provided reference documentation from the RBA (that's Australia's central bank) and APRA (Australia's financial regulator), and the original paper is a document produced by BoE which is the UKs central bank, so I think this is a little more than a purely theoretical argument!

I've also discussed this personally with Sean Carmody[0] who works for APRA and has a long history of working in banking with extensive experience particularly in liquidity risk management.

I'm not making it up!

EDIT: Also if you're interested, this whole lecture series is very good (gotta skip over the start with the host economist talking he rambles on a bit) but in particular lectures 6&7 address banking structure and regulation based on the work of Minksy https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnw-449iRxO-BbfN55FdO...

[0] https://www.apra.gov.au/apras-executive-and-governance