> deposits can be lent out to make money. Your intuition is correct to some degree - if you imagine I go down to the bank and deposit $50 in cash, that deposi

> deposits can be lent out to make money. Your intuition is correct to some degree - if you imagine I go down to the bank and deposit $50 in cash, that deposit is both an asset and a liability to the bank (it expands both sides of the bank's balance sheet by $50). It's an asset in that the bank now owns $50 of paper notes, and it's a liability in that the bank now owes me $50. The bank can then choose to loan out those paper notes to someone else, and therefore you're entirely correct that it can be lent out to make money, however the bank can't lend out the fact they now owe me $50 (that's just a liability to them).