Feb 15, 2018

Educated in Law \\ PFC | Feb 14, 2018 | Banks don’t take deposits. Banks don’t lend money |

It’s a miracle!! Richard Werner, an economist and professor, explains how banks really work. They don’t take deposits and they don’t lend money.
summary and full transcript appears below the video! I typed it out because it’s so important. (Hat tip to @notporc for providing the new video.)
— Begin Transcript —
Banks are being thought of intermediaries, but this not really what’s happening. Banks are creators of the money supply.
I produced the first empirical studies to prove that [banks create money out of thin air].
Banks are thought of as deposit-taking institutions that lend money. The legal reality is banks don’t take deposits and banks don’t lend money.
So what is a deposit? A deposit is not actually a deposit. It’s not a bailment. And it’s not held in custody.
At law, the word deposit is meaningless. The law courts and various judgements have made it very clear if you give your money to a bank even though it’s called a deposit, this money is simply a loan to the bank. So there is no such thing as deposit. It’s a loan at a bank.


So banks borrow from the public. So that much we’ve established.
What about lending? Surely they’re lending money. Umm. No, they don’t. Banks don’t lend money. Banks again, at law, it’s very clear. They’re in the business of purchasing securities. That’s it.
So you say. OK. Don’t confuse me with all that legalese.
I want a loan. Fine, here’s the loan contract. Here’s the offer letter. And you sign. At law, it’s very clear, you have issued a security. Namely a promissory note. And the bank is going to purchase that. That’s what’s happening.
What the bank is doing is very different from what it presents to the public that it’s doing.
How does this fit together? So you say fine, the bank purchases my promissory note, but how do I get my money? This is a loan. I don’t care about the details. I want the money. The bank will say you’ll find it in your account with us. That would be technically correct. If they say, we’ll transfer it to your account, that’s wrong because no money is transferred, at all, from anywhere inside the bank or outside the bank. Why? Because what we call a deposit, is simply the bank’s record of its debt to the public. Now it also owes you money [for the promissory note] and its record of the money it owes you is what you think you’re getting as money [as a loan]. And that’s all it is.
That is how the banks create the money supply. The money supply consists to 97 percent of bank deposits and these are created out of nothing by banks when they lend. Because they invent fictitious customer deposits. Why? They simply restate, slightly incorrectly in accounting terms – what is an accounts payable liability arising from the loan contract having purchased your promissory note – as a customer deposit. But nobody has deposited any money.
I wonder how the FCA [Financial Conduct Authority] deals with this because in the financial sector you’re not supposed to mislead your customers.
— End transcript —

Thoughts

In essence, if I followed it correctly, here’s what Richard Werner says:
Deposits: Customers lend money to the banks, and the account shows how much the bank owes the customer. [I might add that this account may be the bank’s account that it allows the customer to use. Ponder that! Hat tip to Stop the Pirates]
Loans: A customer completes a bank loan application that is really a promissory note. The bank buys the promissory note and adds an accounts payable to the bank’s balance sheet [Learn accounting!]. That accounts payable is the account used by the customer to access the so-called loan.
I’ve heard many others allude to this but never explain it. Winston Shrout has said that we’ve been taught to see everything backwards, in terms of banking, with debits being credits, and credits being debits. [This video with Winston might have this statement.]

Ask for your note back!

I think people should ask for the return of their loan ‘application’ after paying off the ‘loan” since the loan application is really an IOU. An IOU should be returned if the man/woman who wrote the note follows pays off the note/IOU. The goal would be to reduce the quantity of dollars in circulation, as this would increase the value of all other dollars in circulation. It would be dollar deflation, which is good.
Please post a comment below if you ask for your note/application back. I may do this for a school loan years ago.

Comments:

  1. The problem is I can’t buy a home with my promissory note, the one I sold to the bank. So I need to instead sell my promissory note to the bank, and use the bank’s promissory notes (Federal Reserve Notes, aka dollars) to purchase the home.
  2. How does the bank get the Federal Reserve Notes from the Federal Reserve? What is that process?
  3. A credit card might work the same way. The application for the credit card is actually a promissory note that is sold to the credit card company. The customer’s credit card account is actually an accounts payable entry on the books of credit card company.