If banks held 100% of their depositors money, then, no, there would be no liquidity concerns.
However, if a bank holds 100% of depositors money at all times, how does the bank make money?
Fractional reserve banking has been the norm in the United States since at least the National Bank Act of 1863, which created a system of regulated banks with nationally issued charters and limitations on how much of depositors funds could be loaned out.
Practices that amount to fractional reserve banking date back even earlier, when goldsmiths--precursors to the modern bank--would issue promissory notes against gold assets they held on deposit.
The ethics of money lending and, by extension, fractional reserve banking, are about as old as civilization itself. Mosaic Law actually forbade the Israelites from lending money at interest to other Israelites (Exodus 22:25).
Intriguingly, in the Parable of the Talents Jesus seemingly endorsed the practice of charging interest, as the servant who hid the master's money in the ground was chided for not having lent the money out.
The charging of interest was an ongoing topic of theological debate even into the Reformation (Martin Luther condemned the practice, John Calvin said moderate interest was okay).
As a practical matter, if we are going to allow people to borrow money at any significant level--e.g., for a mortgage--there is going to be interest charged, someone's deposits are going to be used for that loan, and thus we have the basics of fractional reserve banking.
Still, fractional reserve banking ideally should not be a license for the bank to be reckless with depositors money. The National Bank Act of 1863 limited the amount of deposits that could be loaned out to 10%. Post-COVID, the Federal Reserve waived reserve requirements, essentially allowing banks to lend practically all depositors money out--this was done to "stimulate" lending and goose the economy.
Can we have a fully functioning economy that provides all the elements we take for granted today without fractional reserve banking? Theoretically, yes, but we'd have a much smaller economy and potentially a lower standard of living as a direct consequence.
Thanks for the informative reply. I didn’t think too hard on what banks would be like if they didn’t write loans. I assume in the good old days, their job was just to store big bags of gold? How did they make money then?
Modern banking has pretty much always been fractional reserve to some degree.
During the Renaissance, families like the Medici in Florence would leverage their personal wealth to fund loans and grow their wealth, but once banking involved other people's money fractional reserve pretty much became inevitable.
Viewed another way, without fractional reserve you would pay the bank to hold your money, not the other way around.
The difference is the fraction held in reserve.
The National Bank Act of 1863 allowed 10% of deposits to be loaned out.
Today you're lucky if the bank holds 10% of your money in reserve.
Which makes about as much sense as taking the shock absorbers off and going off-roading!😈
Jon Rappoport's take on how the bank failures are related to the Covid lockdowns. Subscribe to Jon's Substack.
Are Bank Failures tied to COVID Lockdowns and THAT Giant Economic Destruction created over the past three years?
JON RAPPOPORT
MAR 14
Major media intentionally paid almost no attention to the vastness of the economic destruction caused by the lockdowns.
Businesses closing their doors, going into bankruptcy, millions of people’s lives overturned and destroyed, desolate cities…
But of course, magically, when the lockdowns ended, things returned to normal. Sure they did. The economy picked up. People with no money and no prospects recovered like rubbery cartoon characters bouncing off the rocks after a long fall off a long cliff. “Everything’s fine now!”
Here’s some of what actually happened. MANY of the businesses that failed as a result of the lockdowns had outstanding loans with banks. They stopped paying back those loans. On top of that, many suddenly impoverished businesspeople took out government COVID loans and now they can’t pay them back.
For banks, this creates what economists call a liquidity crunch. Banks lend money. That’s their major activity. They rely on money coming IN as borrowers pay off those loans. When the money coming in dries up, the banks have to curtail putting so many loans OUT.
The free flow of in and out money, based on loans, in an economy that runs on credit…that free flow slows and slows again.
Subscribed
The first banks to fall are the ones who made the craziest loans for the most amount of money. But the problem doesn’t stop there.
The SVB bank that just crashed undoubtedly has connections to other banks. You could say bigger banks back up the smaller ones. This tends to create a domino effect.
So YES, the vicious COVID lockdowns are playing a significant role in what’s happening to banks as we speak.
As I’ve been writing for the past three years, the lockdowns were a strategy intentionally devised to torpedo economies. That’s what COVID WAS.
But of course, there’s more. For instance, the Fed raising interest rates. At the most basic level, these moves discourage borrowers from taking out loans, because their payback is going to be higher. You can imagine the effect on construction companies. And companies that sell cars. Plus, buyers aren’t taking out loans to pay for the cars. Ditto for home buyers. They’re backing away, too.
“I have to pay back MORE on the loans I want to take out for this car and this house? I have to pay back MORE, a lot more, on the loan I want take out for my project to build a city with a ski resort and hotels and casinos and condos in Montana? Hmm. And wait. What’s that? You don’t want to qualify me? You don’t WANT to lend me the money? I NEED the loan. I have to HAVE the loan…”
More torpedoes.
You can also imagine the effect on everybody who buys products with credit cards. So far, the interest rates on those cards have only risen a very small amount. We’ll see if that changes.
Picture a giant ocean of funny crazy money. Everybody can get some. On credit. People think it’s a party.
Until the ocean starts to dry up.
Governments and banks have worked hand in hand to create the ocean. The banks are the ocean managers. They lend ocean and take in ocean (repayment of loans).
But the major, MAJOR players in this scheme always expand and contract the ocean. It’s called whipsaw. Or boom and bust. Or pump and dump. The COVID lockdowns were a bigtime contraction.
The ocean managers (bankers) are still feeling it. The sight of them pretending to be victims is preposterous. They were partners in causing the contraction.
In ADDITION to the economic factors I’ve mentioned so far, I have to point out the possibility of straight-ahead ops to take out banks such as Signature. In other words, the bank’s IMMEDIATE liquidity crisis is heightened or created by a concocted bank run.
The bank doesn’t have enough funds on hand to deal with big depositors who suddenly show up with their hands out demanding their money. The bank makes an appeal for $$ to potential creditors, offering reasonable collateral, but mysteriously, those creditors refuse to come across. And BANG, the curtain falls on the bank. It’s gone.
The federal government steps in and transfers all the depositors and their money to a bigger bank, or to a new bank the government invents out of whole-cloth.
The desired effect is produced: the public believes the government must move in and “secure proper banking.”
Subscribed
Everybody knows the endgame. A bright shiny new government currency. Digital. Every dollar is trackable. Every spender and borrower is trackable. Behave, follow orders, keep mouth shut and eyes straight ahead and your money is safe. Veer off course and you’re beached with lifeguards surrounding you while you stare at the ocean and long for a few buckets of water you’re not going to get.
I don’t know whether it’s time for that big shift all of a sudden, but I do know that a state of emergency could be declared with a BOOM, and the federal government could claim “temporary” control of banks, in order to “remediate and solve the crisis.”
They made a state of emergency work when they commanded the COVID lockdowns. Remember?
And the false story they floated then was about protecting people’s HEALTH. The story made a very big impact. But now they would be targeting a TITANIC concern.
People’s MONEY.
Do you think they could make people salute, jump up and down, do somersaults, stand on their hands, crawl, sing, whistle, beg, pray, to get some MONEY?
2020 was an inflection point where governments everywhere went all in on fascistic illiberal illogical illegal policies, and we're only just now beginning to see how high the price will be for their lunacies.
I'm not sure if the news is really all that bad for Dementia Joe's handlers. This fiasco is far more a Fed/Wall Street fustercluck, which arguably means Janet Yellen (the second most illiterate economist in recent times after Ben Bernanke) gets to play the hero who jumps in to clean up Powell's mess (at least, that would be the politically useful narrative).
What the news today does show is that government is bad at managing an economy, period (for the occasional somnambulist outside the Democratic Party who didn't already know that). That's bad news for all in government, because it means the one thing they all want to do they absolutely should never do.
I appreciate your efforts in rounding up all this data for us! My question is: what is your confidence level in the data itself, relative to your confidence in data given in past eras? Are the regulatory agencies ‘spinning’ the data more these days, just because it has become the government cultural norm? When the government says that inflation has lessened
Broad brush statistics such as consumer price inflation are inherently problematic, and always have been. The CPI was arguably rigged back during the Clinton administration, which is why some assume consumer price increases are a sugar coating of the "real" inflation rate
By far the most meaningful aspect of the CPI data is the trend. Do I accept the government line that inflation is at 6%? Only so far. I do accept that inflation coming down, albeit slowly.
Am I right in this rather simple line of thinking? If it weren’t for fractional lending, we wouldn’t have any of these problems?
If banks held 100% of their depositors money, then, no, there would be no liquidity concerns.
However, if a bank holds 100% of depositors money at all times, how does the bank make money?
Fractional reserve banking has been the norm in the United States since at least the National Bank Act of 1863, which created a system of regulated banks with nationally issued charters and limitations on how much of depositors funds could be loaned out.
https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/national-banking-acts
Practices that amount to fractional reserve banking date back even earlier, when goldsmiths--precursors to the modern bank--would issue promissory notes against gold assets they held on deposit.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fractionalreservebanking.asp
The ethics of money lending and, by extension, fractional reserve banking, are about as old as civilization itself. Mosaic Law actually forbade the Israelites from lending money at interest to other Israelites (Exodus 22:25).
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+22%3A25&version=RSV
Intriguingly, in the Parable of the Talents Jesus seemingly endorsed the practice of charging interest, as the servant who hid the master's money in the ground was chided for not having lent the money out.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2025%3A14-30&version=RSV
The charging of interest was an ongoing topic of theological debate even into the Reformation (Martin Luther condemned the practice, John Calvin said moderate interest was okay).
As a practical matter, if we are going to allow people to borrow money at any significant level--e.g., for a mortgage--there is going to be interest charged, someone's deposits are going to be used for that loan, and thus we have the basics of fractional reserve banking.
Still, fractional reserve banking ideally should not be a license for the bank to be reckless with depositors money. The National Bank Act of 1863 limited the amount of deposits that could be loaned out to 10%. Post-COVID, the Federal Reserve waived reserve requirements, essentially allowing banks to lend practically all depositors money out--this was done to "stimulate" lending and goose the economy.
Can we have a fully functioning economy that provides all the elements we take for granted today without fractional reserve banking? Theoretically, yes, but we'd have a much smaller economy and potentially a lower standard of living as a direct consequence.
Thanks for the informative reply. I didn’t think too hard on what banks would be like if they didn’t write loans. I assume in the good old days, their job was just to store big bags of gold? How did they make money then?
Loans.
Modern banking has pretty much always been fractional reserve to some degree.
During the Renaissance, families like the Medici in Florence would leverage their personal wealth to fund loans and grow their wealth, but once banking involved other people's money fractional reserve pretty much became inevitable.
Viewed another way, without fractional reserve you would pay the bank to hold your money, not the other way around.
The difference is the fraction held in reserve.
The National Bank Act of 1863 allowed 10% of deposits to be loaned out.
Today you're lucky if the bank holds 10% of your money in reserve.
Which makes about as much sense as taking the shock absorbers off and going off-roading!😈
Good insights, Peter. Linking once again @https://nothingnewunderthesun2016.com/
Jon Rappoport's take on how the bank failures are related to the Covid lockdowns. Subscribe to Jon's Substack.
Are Bank Failures tied to COVID Lockdowns and THAT Giant Economic Destruction created over the past three years?
JON RAPPOPORT
MAR 14
Major media intentionally paid almost no attention to the vastness of the economic destruction caused by the lockdowns.
Businesses closing their doors, going into bankruptcy, millions of people’s lives overturned and destroyed, desolate cities…
But of course, magically, when the lockdowns ended, things returned to normal. Sure they did. The economy picked up. People with no money and no prospects recovered like rubbery cartoon characters bouncing off the rocks after a long fall off a long cliff. “Everything’s fine now!”
Here’s some of what actually happened. MANY of the businesses that failed as a result of the lockdowns had outstanding loans with banks. They stopped paying back those loans. On top of that, many suddenly impoverished businesspeople took out government COVID loans and now they can’t pay them back.
For banks, this creates what economists call a liquidity crunch. Banks lend money. That’s their major activity. They rely on money coming IN as borrowers pay off those loans. When the money coming in dries up, the banks have to curtail putting so many loans OUT.
The free flow of in and out money, based on loans, in an economy that runs on credit…that free flow slows and slows again.
Subscribed
The first banks to fall are the ones who made the craziest loans for the most amount of money. But the problem doesn’t stop there.
The SVB bank that just crashed undoubtedly has connections to other banks. You could say bigger banks back up the smaller ones. This tends to create a domino effect.
So YES, the vicious COVID lockdowns are playing a significant role in what’s happening to banks as we speak.
As I’ve been writing for the past three years, the lockdowns were a strategy intentionally devised to torpedo economies. That’s what COVID WAS.
But of course, there’s more. For instance, the Fed raising interest rates. At the most basic level, these moves discourage borrowers from taking out loans, because their payback is going to be higher. You can imagine the effect on construction companies. And companies that sell cars. Plus, buyers aren’t taking out loans to pay for the cars. Ditto for home buyers. They’re backing away, too.
“I have to pay back MORE on the loans I want to take out for this car and this house? I have to pay back MORE, a lot more, on the loan I want take out for my project to build a city with a ski resort and hotels and casinos and condos in Montana? Hmm. And wait. What’s that? You don’t want to qualify me? You don’t WANT to lend me the money? I NEED the loan. I have to HAVE the loan…”
More torpedoes.
You can also imagine the effect on everybody who buys products with credit cards. So far, the interest rates on those cards have only risen a very small amount. We’ll see if that changes.
Picture a giant ocean of funny crazy money. Everybody can get some. On credit. People think it’s a party.
Until the ocean starts to dry up.
Governments and banks have worked hand in hand to create the ocean. The banks are the ocean managers. They lend ocean and take in ocean (repayment of loans).
But the major, MAJOR players in this scheme always expand and contract the ocean. It’s called whipsaw. Or boom and bust. Or pump and dump. The COVID lockdowns were a bigtime contraction.
The ocean managers (bankers) are still feeling it. The sight of them pretending to be victims is preposterous. They were partners in causing the contraction.
In ADDITION to the economic factors I’ve mentioned so far, I have to point out the possibility of straight-ahead ops to take out banks such as Signature. In other words, the bank’s IMMEDIATE liquidity crisis is heightened or created by a concocted bank run.
The bank doesn’t have enough funds on hand to deal with big depositors who suddenly show up with their hands out demanding their money. The bank makes an appeal for $$ to potential creditors, offering reasonable collateral, but mysteriously, those creditors refuse to come across. And BANG, the curtain falls on the bank. It’s gone.
The federal government steps in and transfers all the depositors and their money to a bigger bank, or to a new bank the government invents out of whole-cloth.
The desired effect is produced: the public believes the government must move in and “secure proper banking.”
Subscribed
Everybody knows the endgame. A bright shiny new government currency. Digital. Every dollar is trackable. Every spender and borrower is trackable. Behave, follow orders, keep mouth shut and eyes straight ahead and your money is safe. Veer off course and you’re beached with lifeguards surrounding you while you stare at the ocean and long for a few buckets of water you’re not going to get.
I don’t know whether it’s time for that big shift all of a sudden, but I do know that a state of emergency could be declared with a BOOM, and the federal government could claim “temporary” control of banks, in order to “remediate and solve the crisis.”
They made a state of emergency work when they commanded the COVID lockdowns. Remember?
And the false story they floated then was about protecting people’s HEALTH. The story made a very big impact. But now they would be targeting a TITANIC concern.
People’s MONEY.
Do you think they could make people salute, jump up and down, do somersaults, stand on their hands, crawl, sing, whistle, beg, pray, to get some MONEY?
-- Jon Rappoport
I argued at the time the government response to COVID was going to do more harm than good, and events since then have proved me right many times over.
https://newsletter.allfactsmatter.us/p/destroying-society-is-no-way-to-save
https://newsletter.allfactsmatter.us/p/research-shows-i-was-right-in-2020
2020 was an inflection point where governments everywhere went all in on fascistic illiberal illogical illegal policies, and we're only just now beginning to see how high the price will be for their lunacies.
The good news today is that it's bad news for Biden.
I'm not sure if the news is really all that bad for Dementia Joe's handlers. This fiasco is far more a Fed/Wall Street fustercluck, which arguably means Janet Yellen (the second most illiterate economist in recent times after Ben Bernanke) gets to play the hero who jumps in to clean up Powell's mess (at least, that would be the politically useful narrative).
What the news today does show is that government is bad at managing an economy, period (for the occasional somnambulist outside the Democratic Party who didn't already know that). That's bad news for all in government, because it means the one thing they all want to do they absolutely should never do.
I appreciate your efforts in rounding up all this data for us! My question is: what is your confidence level in the data itself, relative to your confidence in data given in past eras? Are the regulatory agencies ‘spinning’ the data more these days, just because it has become the government cultural norm? When the government says that inflation has lessened
Broad brush statistics such as consumer price inflation are inherently problematic, and always have been. The CPI was arguably rigged back during the Clinton administration, which is why some assume consumer price increases are a sugar coating of the "real" inflation rate
By far the most meaningful aspect of the CPI data is the trend. Do I accept the government line that inflation is at 6%? Only so far. I do accept that inflation coming down, albeit slowly.
...has lessened, do you suspect that the inflation data is more ‘manipulated’ than it would have been 10 years ago?