Fractional Banking System Explained

While I question one or two assertions in the video, I find the overall content reasonably accurate and informative on how the banking system works. My biggest disagreements are:

  1. The video suggests that each bank "creates" money anytime it hands out a loan; this is misleading. The best way to think about it is as if everything used paper money (rather than electronic). In this scenario, if you deposit $10 billion in a bank, the bank lends out $9 billion of those dollars; these are eventually deposited into someone else's account and then those banks can issue $8.1 billion, etc. So, yes there is an accounting affect of increasing the amount of money on the books, but the net wealth in the system never exceeds the $10 billion.
  2. Some of the charts and statements at the end are also rather misleading; the chart of debt and money supply ignores the effects of inflation which is quite significant.
  3. Also, the allegations that there would be no money without debt is also technically true under the current system, but is misleading in that there would still be inherent wealth in our society.