Quote from: dinofelis on February 13, 2015, 06:53:54 AM

Quote from: johnyj on February 13, 2015, 03:46:01 AM

Indeed, this back to the question of prefer to live in a dream world or real world. Most of the people live in a world that they believe it is

The point is that the funny thing with money is that money is money when enough people think it is money. And when that happens, it is real, and the "dream world" becomes the real world, and the "real world" where "this is not money" becomes, eventually a dream.

No doubt, it is this logic makes bitcoin a money: If there are enough people who think bitcoin is money, then it is money. So to the end, to make something money is trying to make as many people as possible to believe it is money

Quote from: dinofelis on February 13, 2015, 06:53:54 AM

Credit money creation with deposit accounts is in fact unavoidable from the moment you allow for borrowing.

1) We pay with sea shells. The money is only base money. The only way to borrow money is to find someone to lend them to you, and to write out a contract. That's the financial equivalent of barter.

2) We use banks as vaults. That is, we go to a bank, give them 100 sea shells, and we get a deposit account with 100 sea shells on it. The bank keeps the shells, and we pay one another with the deposit accounts.

This is in fact exactly the principle of John Law's central bank. The fiat is now the deposit accounts, and every bank acts as a central bank, having 100% coverage of their deposits. But

3) Banks can borrow money. If someone comes to a bank, and borrows 80 sea shells (against a contract with the bank to pay back in due time 85 sea shells), then the bank will CREATE him a deposit account with 80 sea shells on it.
But the bank cannot remove 80 of the 100 shells from my account, because that deposit account tells exactly that the bank owes me 100 shells, which is still right.

But now there is 180 shells equivalent in deposit accounts (which was the de facto money now).

If banks strictly follow 100% reserve ratio, they can not borrow you any shell and create deposit numbers, since all those shells would be reserved at central bank, they have no single one shell at hand to lend (In fact that is the liquidity squeeze we have seen in a banking crisis, even they had 10% reserve ratio, banks would still loan out as much as possible and deplete their shell reserve)

But this is FRB, still a small trick comparing with the fact that they could create deposit numbers backed by shell, which is a double spending of shell's purchasing power. Without double spending, the banks ability to create credit money is limited by their shell reserve and multiply ratio, but with double spending, the banks can literally create as much money as they wish. With maybe only one ounce of gold they could acquire the whole world by repeating the process, no FRB needed

Speaking strictly, this is not exactly double spending. Some times when customer withdraw their shell, corresponding deposit numbers on their account must be destroyed, so some of those purchasing power is not duplicated, just like in a FRB system

But banks can prevent this withdraw from happening using many strategies. For example, make the fiat money the only transaction medium, so that when economy expands, the demand for fiat money increases. Another way is to increase the debt of the nation by buying more government bonds, when the debt increases, so increases the amount of money needed to repay the debt. And after removal of gold standard, they have removed the redeem possibility of issued fiat money, means once issued, only central bank have the right to destroy those fiat money by selling assets. This, together with a forever expanding economy, makes the double spending almost a sure thing

If you understand the implication of this double spending practice, then you would easily understand the following quote

"Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The Bankers own the Earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of a pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to disappear, for this world would be a happier and better world to live in. But if you wish to remain slaves of the Bankers and pay for the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits." Sir Josiah Stamp, President of the Bank of England in the 1920s, the second richest man in Britain.