3 ms·

ELI5?

carapace 7y ago
Well... > Fractional-reserve banking is the most common form of banking practised by commercial banks worldwide. It involves banks accepting deposits from customers and making loans to borrowers, while holding in reserve an amount equal to only a fraction of the bank's deposit liabilities. Bank reserves are held as cash in the bank or as balances in the bank's account at the central bank. The minimum amount that banks are required to hold in liquid assets is determined by the country's central bank, and is called the reserve requirement or reserve ratio. Banks usually hold more than this minimum amount, keeping excess reserves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking It's a mighty pillar of our global economic systems or the biggest scam ever or both depending on who you ask. Anyway, if I understand correctly (and I don't, IANAEconomist), now the fraction is zero. But I don't know what that means and I suspect few do. It sounds like it means that banks can just write loans all day long and "poof" money into existence, but I've been told that that is somehow not the case. Higher economics is indistinguishable from numerology (in terms of semantic analysis) to me, so I shouldn't comment further. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will show up and read the tea leaves for us.
- XnoiVeX 7y ago
  It is not clear if this is temporary. I do not see an end date just an effective date. Does anyone know?
zyang 7y ago
Banks are given license to print money.
- jfengel 7y ago
  Banks have always had a license to print money. They're just being allowed to print even more of it.
ahelwer 7y ago
Say you have a bank account with $100 in it. At 100% reserve requirements, the bank must have that $100 actually in its possession at all times. This is very safe, because you are guaranteed to be able to withdraw your money in the event of a bank run. However, an economist might believe this is suboptimal because the $100 is just sitting there doing nothing rather than "circulating in the economy". Thus the concept of the reserve ratio is born: banks don't keep that $100 around, but instead lend a percentage of it out or do whatever weird trades they want to do to make money. This is called fractional-reserve banking. Before this change, reserve requirements in the US were at 10% which means the bank could lend out $90. Now in general this is problematic because if everyone were to try to withdraw their money at once, the bank could not produce it. Thus we have the FDIC, which is a government program that insures bank account deposits up to $250k so people don't lose all their money if a bank run happens. A cynical way of looking at this is that taxpayers are on the hook for the bank's bad behavior if they go bust, and the lower the reserve ratio the more likely the bank is to overdo it. Things also get really weird when other banks are in the picture. If you deposit $100 at bank A which has 10% reserve ratio, it will lend out $90 - so total money in the system is now $190. That $90 might end up deposited at bank B, which also has a 10% reserve ratio, so it lends out $81 making the total amount of money in the system $190 + $81 = $271. This process continues until it approaches the value of principal * (1 / reserve ratio), so in our case $100 * (1 / 0.1) = $1000 [0]. At 0% this means technically infinite money can be lent/created, although banks will presumably keep some percentage as reserves due to internal risk requirements (interesting assumption, I know). Reserve requirement ratios are viewed as one of the levers the government can use to help steer the economy. Reducing the reserve requirement ratio has the effect of increasing the overall money supply, which has some nonlinear effect on the economy that the government wants to happen. This move to 0%, in addition to various other recent moves by the federal reserve, are all geared toward flooding the economy with cheap easy money to prop it up. They will all fail. [0] https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/67/money/money-multiplier-and-reserve-ratio-in-us/ https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/67/money/money-multiplier...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- nybble41 7y ago
jellicle 7y ago
It's now legal for a bank with $1,000,000,000 in deposits to have absolutely zero cash available to pay out those deposits if people want their cash out. What could go wrong.

ELI5?

Well... > Fractional-reserve banking is the most common form of banking practised by commercial banks worldwide. It involves banks accepting deposits from customers and making loans to borrowers, while holding in reserve an amount equal to only a fraction of the bank's deposit liabilities. Bank reserves are held as cash in the bank or as balances in the bank's account at the central bank. The minimum amount that banks are required to hold in liquid assets is determined by the country's central bank, and is called the reserve requirement or reserve ratio. Banks usually hold more than this minimum amount, keeping excess reserves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking It's a mighty pillar of our global economic systems or the biggest scam ever or both depending on who you ask. Anyway, if I understand correctly (and I don't, IANAEconomist), now the fraction is zero. But I don't know what that means and I suspect few do. It sounds like it means that banks can just write loans all day long and "poof" money into existence, but I've been told that that is somehow not the case. Higher economics is indistinguishable from numerology (in terms of semantic analysis) to me, so I shouldn't comment further. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will show up and read the tea leaves for us.

XnoiVeX 7y ago
It is not clear if this is temporary. I do not see an end date just an effective date. Does anyone know?

zyang 7y ago

Banks are given license to print money.

jfengel 7y ago
Banks have always had a license to print money. They're just being allowed to print even more of it.

ahelwer 7y ago

Say you have a bank account with $100 in it. At 100% reserve requirements, the bank must have that $100 actually in its possession at all times. This is very safe, because you are guaranteed to be able to withdraw your money in the event of a bank run. However, an economist might believe this is suboptimal because the $100 is just sitting there doing nothing rather than "circulating in the economy". Thus the concept of the reserve ratio is born: banks don't keep that $100 around, but instead lend a percentage of it out or do whatever weird trades they want to do to make money. This is called fractional-reserve banking. Before this change, reserve requirements in the US were at 10% which means the bank could lend out $90. Now in general this is problematic because if everyone were to try to withdraw their money at once, the bank could not produce it. Thus we have the FDIC, which is a government program that insures bank account deposits up to $250k so people don't lose all their money if a bank run happens. A cynical way of looking at this is that taxpayers are on the hook for the bank's bad behavior if they go bust, and the lower the reserve ratio the more likely the bank is to overdo it. Things also get really weird when other banks are in the picture. If you deposit $100 at bank A which has 10% reserve ratio, it will lend out $90 - so total money in the system is now $190. That $90 might end up deposited at bank B, which also has a 10% reserve ratio, so it lends out $81 making the total amount of money in the system $190 + $81 = $271. This process continues until it approaches the value of principal * (1 / reserve ratio), so in our case $100 * (1 / 0.1) = $1000 [0]. At 0% this means technically infinite money can be lent/created, although banks will presumably keep some percentage as reserves due to internal risk requirements (interesting assumption, I know). Reserve requirement ratios are viewed as one of the levers the government can use to help steer the economy. Reducing the reserve requirement ratio has the effect of increasing the overall money supply, which has some nonlinear effect on the economy that the government wants to happen. This move to 0%, in addition to various other recent moves by the federal reserve, are all geared toward flooding the economy with cheap easy money to prop it up. They will all fail. [0] https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/67/money/money-multiplier-and-reserve-ratio-in-us/ https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/67/money/money-multiplier...

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
nybble41 7y ago

jellicle 7y ago

It's now legal for a bank with $1,000,000,000 in deposits to have absolutely zero cash available to pay out those deposits if people want their cash out. What could go wrong.