zhte415 comment covers two cases: lending out no gold and lending out one unit of gold. I don't see it supporting your argument that a bank can loan out more g

zhte415 comment covers two cases: lending out no gold and lending out one unit of gold. I don't see it supporting your argument that a bank can loan out more gold than it has borrowed. The reason I welcome zhte415's comment is that thinking in terms of balance sheets usually clarifies things (as noted in the comment). For example, the top 5 biggest retail banks in the US hold between 20%-40% more in deposits than they have issued loans individually as well as in aggregate. Don't you think that if retail banks worked in the way you are claiming - i.e. raising $X in deposits but issuing >$X in loans that there would be some example of this happening? For at least one bank in the US? It just doesn't happen.