Wednesday 12 February 2014

Not all counterfeiting is illegal

The nature of fractional-reserve banking is that banks (and their customers) are able to inflate the money supply and increase nominal prices. There is a difference between broad money and narrow money and the difference is that broad money is issued by the (state-guaranteed) commercial banks unlike narrow money which comes from the central bank. Without the state guarantee the commercial banking sector would not be able to issue money because unfunded liabilities would have no value. It is because the government is standing behind the banks that their (excess) credit has value equal to that of normal money. So when a bank issues a loan (or a mortgage) new money is being created and the bank together with the customer is increasing the money supply. And because it is the customer who initiates this arrangement then it is they who are in fact causing inflation. This a legal form of counterfeiting and so then people who borrow money are counterfeiting the currency. So then is it not always illegal for citizens to counterfeit the currency they are able to do so when they get a loan from a (state-guaranteed) bank. Counterfeiting is not always illegal since it is legal to borrow money from insolvent (state-guaranteed) banks.

No comments:

Post a Comment