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> Oh, but those are not your money, strictly speaking: when you make a deposit, you surrender the legal title to the cash You don't own the $10 cash bill in yo
by jlokier 5y ago
> Oh, but those are not your money, strictly speaking: when you make a deposit, you surrender the legal title to the cash
You don't own the $10 cash bill in your pocket either. It's just a promissory note from the central bank.
When you deposit that $10 cash, you're not surrendering legal title, you're transferring liability. Switching from one third party to another.
Debating what that really means is where the discussion gets interesting. But rather philosophical. Pragmatically, you own money in a bank account the same way as you own it in cash.
Have fun with the turtles all the way down!
- shadowgovt 5y agoNot at all wrong. What protects my (in the US) bank money isn't that I own the $10 the bank is holding for me; it's that the bank is FDIC-insured and if it's ever not able to satisfy our contract and give me my money back, the US government will step in and hand me my $10. ... and that $10 has value because the US government says it does, and people believe it (including international banks and other naton-states, which cram physical dollars into secure vaults as back-stops against the implosion of their domestic currencies).