Remarkl
1 min readAug 31, 2020

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Money is rarely created "out of thin air." It is usually created out of creditworthiness. Some entities are so creditworthy that we cannot see their creditworthiness reduced by their taking on more debt. But if you believe that that the USA, for example, can incur too much debt, then you believe that its creditworthiness is impaired pro tanto by each bit of debt it takes on. That's not thin air.

Banks don't lend out deposits. Banks lend against their own creditworthiness. That's why there can be "non-bank banks," which make loans but don't take deposits. Deposits are a supply of cash to move around the banking system, but a solvent bank can get cash anywhere. A bank loan is a promise by a bank to honor a check on the account the loan creates; the bank's credit, not its cash on hand, makes the promise good.

OTOH, if any issuer of "money" issues more money than its creditworthiness will allow, THAT money is, indeed, printed "out of thin air." Unfortunately, we only know that the issuer has over-created money when we DISCOVER too late that it was in fact printing it out of thin air, because the issuer's creditworthiness had been exhausted.

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Remarkl
Remarkl

Written by Remarkl

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