There are those who can display a solid grasp of the oft–misunderstood mechanics of credit and money generation by banks and who are also well aware of the episodes of endemic mistakes this entrains in in our system. Yet, perhaps because they possess a certain ideological bent, many such commentators cannot seem to steel themselves to take the next step and admit that very little of this has anything to do with a free market, or that those mistakes are decidely not an intrinsic feature of what they like to call ‘capitalism’.
Category Archives: Central banks
Banks DO Create Money
For those who will not take my word for it that banks do create deposits by lending money, let me quote you a little Roepke from a footnote (p113) to his 1936 work, ‘Crises & Cycles’:
“The process [of credit creation] is now clearly explained in any text-book on economics, banking or money (especially recommendable is Hartley Withers’ Meaning of Money). A fuller treatment may be found in the following books: R. G. Hawtrey, op. cit.; J. M. Keynes, A Treatise on Money, pp. 23-49 : C. A. Philips, Bank Credit, New York, 1920; W. F. Crick, “The Genesis of Bank Deposits,” Economica, June 1927, and F. A. von Hayek, Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle, London,1933.”