this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2026
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Yes, the limit to commercial bank lending is creditworthiness and default risk (because the bank is left holding the bag when a borrower doesn't repay), and the cost of maintaining liquidity (the bank can borrow against the loans it owns, but it may cost a higher interest rate than they'd earn on the cash they've lent out). This paper lays it out pretty clearly, and is basically the near unanimous view among macroeconomists.
Or, in some regulatory environments, banks are required to maintain a minimum fractional reserve, which limits the total amount of loans it can lend out with its underlying assets.
But the money is created when the loans are created, and destroyed when the loans are repaid. The other stuff behind the scenes to give the system stability is important, but doesn't actually create or destroy money.
Exactly. The bank can borrow, for which they need collateral, which sufficiently proves that what you're saying is wrong.
They have to manage their balance sheet actively, and your original statement was in the lines of 'it's all made up and they have infinite equity supply'.
Read my original comment again. I explicitly talk about banks borrowing to maintain liquidity. It's an important limit on their ability to create money, and nobody said anything about infinite money supply.
But it doesn't change the fact that the act of money creation is caused by a bank creating a loan, and the money comes into being without a single physical act of manufacturing: it happens on a computer, and before computers it happened on paper.
So without claiming that money was unlimited, I did point out that money itself is overwhelningly digital in the modern age. And the limits don't come from any physical constraints.
Fitting username. Explaining this to people irl who respect and listen to me is hard; can’t imagine trying to inform someone online who’s simultaneously trying to win the conversation you’re having