That's what always amazed me. Are the banks rich ? When inspecting their balance sheets, assuming (probably wrongly) that they're not hiding anything, I'm riche

That's what always amazed me. Are the banks rich ? When inspecting their balance sheets, assuming (probably wrongly) that they're not hiding anything, I'm richer than they are percentually. Now what I mean by that is that if you take the ratio of assets + money I own and divide it by the money I owe, and even ignore things like the NPV of my business (unless I close it tonight, it's not zero, right ?), then that ratio is a lot bigger for me than it is for stuff like JP Morgan and so on (for one, it's significantly bigger than 1, somewhere between 1.3 and 1.5, hell if I'm optimistic on my house, maybe even 2, but I'm dreaming. JPM is nowhere near 1). That's how banks' capital works : lots of big loans. The majority of their capital does not even actually come from their shareholders, but from fractional reserve banking. Most banks have values that are below 1, which you would think makes them bankrupt, but I guess I'm seeing that wrong. Creating a new bank means you effectively get to multiply money, over time, by a factor of 20 to 50, depending, assuming you can make enough loans and deposits. Given that that's how that works, how can that possibly not be a crime ? The more I read about that, the more I'm inclined to go into finance and find a few more of those kinds of transactions I can do. So can you explain a stupid question to me ? Why can't I borrow the amounts these big banks do in my own company, skim off 2% for myself (they, on average, do about 4%, so 2% seems like a sweet deal), and be richer than Bill Gates (by a very nice factor) ? Sure I can't afford the lawyers necessary for doing that, but ...