Debunking fractional reserve conspiracies

However in the long term, or when people start to default on loans there is a problem, that is when the lending stops we are left with a greater ammount of debt than money in the system and everyone wants their money back.
I think that's quite an odd way of looking at it. Anti-fractional reserve theorists appear to believe that banks never lose any money in bankruptcies. Or at least I've never seen them explain why that could not offset the 'missing money' that is not created for the interest.
 
In a free society, a bank that fails to convince others that its paper currency is trustworthy will not be in the currency business for long. No matter how a particular store lists its prices, paying with a different currency would be as simple as paying with a different credit card, and online shopping and portable electronics can make currency conversion entirely transparent.

In our society, the government has a total monopoly (as only a government can have) on the issuance of legal tender. Try to offer an alternative (ex. Liberty Dollar), and thugs with guns will come for you soon enough!


Where the hell were you for the "Why the derision for Ancap/Libertarianism" thread?

I would've thought you would jump right in.
 
macdoc ...Ha Ha Ha: Fractional banking is designed to match money supply with wealth creation demand?
Fractional Reserve Banking was a scam in the 1700s and it is still a scam today. The purpose of fractional reserve banking is indebtedness and power. Banks dont loan money, they create money and consequently control lawmakers with that money. I think you are trying to overlook history, rewrite it perhaps. Fractional Reserve banking did not come about due to some intelligentsia monetary reform, it came into being because of the quest for power and greed a small group of dominant men.
 
Cool! Another thread where we can laugh at the Conspiratards!

It's funny - someone creates a thread to debunk his nutjob friends, and instead all the nutjobs jump in to tell him his friends are correct! :)
 
What I have never had explained to me is exactly how we are supposed to get rid of fractional reserve banking. The only way is to decide that banks can't lend money. But then we have a situation were banks can't pay interest on their deposits, can't pay tellers, can't have offices, can't invest in ATMs, etc. All those things come from being able to lend out 90% of our deposits.
 
What I have never had explained to me is exactly how we are supposed to get rid of fractional reserve banking. The only way is to decide that banks can't lend money. But then we have a situation were banks can't pay interest on their deposits, can't pay tellers, can't have offices, can't invest in ATMs, etc. All those things come from being able to lend out 90% of our deposits.

Ah but it's all tied into gold and "real" money. You know, where we can go and demand our gram of gold and spend it on a loaf of bread...

...Yawn

... and we all live in this simple society where I make shoes and you make whatever and life is so simple that we don't need to worry about buying anything from the next town let alone another country. We don't need banks or money lenders and the Earth is flat and the moon is made of cheese and ...

Steve
 
macdoc ...Ha Ha Ha: Fractional banking is designed to match money supply with wealth creation demand?
Fractional Reserve Banking was a scam in the 1700s and it is still a scam today. The purpose of fractional reserve banking is indebtedness and power. Banks dont loan money, they create money and consequently control lawmakers with that money. I think you are trying to overlook history, rewrite it perhaps. Fractional Reserve banking did not come about due to some intelligentsia monetary reform, it came into being because of the quest for power and greed a small group of dominant men.
One part of this is right. They don't "loan" money, since loan is a noun. They lend it.
 
I think that's quite an odd way of looking at it. Anti-fractional reserve theorists appear to believe that banks never lose any money in bankruptcies.

Annoying, isn't it? At the root of the problem is an erroneous view of how fractional reserve banking creates money.

If a bank takes $100 in deposits and has a 10% reserve requirement, it may choose to lend up to $90. It looks like this:

Assets: $10 reserves, $90 loans. Liabilities: $100 deposits.

Those $90 it lent out gets spent and whomever recieves them may put them back into the bank, and the bank may again lend out 90% of that. If repeated to the full extent possible you get:

Assets: $100 reserves, $900 loans. Liabilities: $1000 deposits.

Fractional reserve conspiracy kooks have a tendency to say that the bank has now created $900, since they still have the original $100 and $900 in loans, they just willed it into existance somehow and if they lose that money, well it's no skin off their backs.

Back in reality however, no new money has come into existance, just a bunch of debt(the bank owes $1000 to depositors and is owed $900 by lenders, this was accomplished by passing the same $100 back and forth).

The money creation comes when depositors treat the bank debt as if it were money; they pay with a credit card or check or something of that nature. What happens then is that the bank transfers the debt they owe to a depositor from one bank account to another bank account. The recipient of the check or credit card has just accepted debt owed by a bank in lieu of money and they've done so voluntarily. The bank doesn't monetize its debt, its depositors do.

In reality, a fractional reserve bank is quite highly leveraged and taking even a small loss on outstanding loans can quickly bankrupt them.

Nor is there anything fraudulent about fractional reserve banking if proper standards are followed. If someone wants a mortgage for instance, a responsible bank will demand a sufficient down-payment so that even if the house depreciates rapidly and the mortgage defaults the bank can still recoup their investment; a responsible bank will generate a detailed credit risk assesment for each person based on income, existing debt service, how many houses are in default in the target area, credit history etc. Unsecured loans(e.g. credit cards) should never exceed their excess capital and interest rates should be set accordingly.

With properly secured loans the bank does not make the full profit desired if a loan defaults, but it won't kill the bank even if every secured loan fails. With unsecured loans being met with excess capital the bank can eat the defaults from 100% of it's unsecured debt without needing a visit from the nice men and women working for the FDIC. Neither of these will make the share-holders happy since they will not realise the full profit or will take a beating, but the bank will stay solvent which means that should it choose to, the bank can sell all those loans and other assets, repay all its depositors in full, have some money left over to be divided among its share holders and close its doors. As soon as the institution is known to be insolvent it must be taken into recievership to minimize loses to its depositors and the FDIC or it might go further into insolvency.
 
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Oh, it gets better then that.
We have a couple people who post here (plumjam for one) who think that interest on loans, period, is immoral.
 
Privatized competing monies would be such a calamity... :covereyes

I'm pretty sure it would. One of the routine scams that runs through my friends in the Fraser Valley (the 'gullible belt') is barter schemes. As soon as they build up enough tokens (they emphasize that it's not money per se), they discover the tokens have either hyperinflated or that the token management system has just plain broken down and their tokens aren't accepted by other participants anymore.

Private banks used to issue currency, as everybody knows. This put enormous power in the hands of the bank's shareowners, and bankruptcy was an easy way to wipe out a community's savings and slam the brakes on their economy until an alternative could be found. Nationalization of currency has eliminated this risk.

If fractional reserve critics think banks are corrupt, why would it make sense to put them completely in charge? How are AirMiles working out?


Note: I can't help but notice that attempts to spin off threads about the fractional reserve bugs appears futile. No meta topics for skeptics, apparently.
 
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Why do you feel that you need to debunk the flaws of the fractional reserve system?

No system is perfect. Everything is a tradeoff. Sure, there are some crazy theories out there, but there is also factual information about the imperfections of this system.

Personally, I have always had a problem with our monetary system. There is no reason why anybody should be out of work. Certainly there is something constructive these people can do, but how do you pay for it? That is the problem. Over burdening the tax payers can become a moral issue, as can printing more money.
 
What's the legal status of gift certificates and currencies like Disney Dollars? Aren't those a form of free market currency?
 
Personally, I have always had a problem with our monetary system. There is no reason why anybody should be out of work.

Sure there is. Because they don't understand how little what-they-are-willing-to-do is worth, or disagree with what employers' assessment is.

I think my ability to sing, act, and dance is worth several million dollars a year, but for some reason, I haven't been able to persuade a single Broadway producer of that fact.

In some cases, the work may literally be of negative value. If, for instance, you offer to paint my house, but only if I buy the paint for you, then it your work may be worth less to me than the cost of the paint, and I won't hire anyone to do the job. This is how we get unemployment. You want work as a house painter, but no one needs their house painted badly enough to pay for it. The value of your house-painting skills is literally negative.
 
recently i met a CS banker, and he also said, Fractional reserve banking is a problem, but no conspiracy involved.
 

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