If they're buying treasuries, or other financial assets, it's a mattress. There's an easy way to tell, are you still holding a financial asset after your 'inve

If they're buying treasuries, or other financial assets, it's a mattress. There's an easy way to tell, are you still holding a financial asset after your 'investment', then you haven't really invested by the Wikipedia definition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_private_domestic_investment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_private_domestic_investme...). In some situations, financial investments can enable real investment by second parties (buying into an IPO for example), but the usual example of bank lending is not one of those cases.