Quote from: JoelKatz on August 02, 2011, 04:35:52 PM

Quote from: Astrohacker on August 02, 2011, 03:54:18 PM

Here's how banks counterfeit money. You deposit $100. The bank loans out $80 of your money to someone else. They put that money back in the bank. The bank now has $100 - all your money. But your checking account says $100, and the loanee's checking account says $80, for a total of $180. The bank has now effectively created--that is, counterfeited--$80 in new money. They gave this new money to themselves, and then loaned it out. Since their reserves are still over 20% (or whatever the present reserve requirement is), they keep doing this until they have stolen control over 80% of the money.

I'm curious about your reasoning and whether you actually believe it. Say I am short on cash right now, maybe I get paid next week and am hungry today. So I give someone an IOU for $20, payable to the bearer in two weeks, in exchange for $18. The $20 IOU is new money. Have I counterfeited, in your view?

The $100 in your checking account is an IOU, stating that the bank owes you $100. It is an IOU that the bank fully intends to repay, has made reasonable arrangements to ensure they can repay, and barring unusual circumstances, that they actually do repay. No fraud is involved. Nothing is claimed to be something that it is not.

Yes I actually believe it. For more information, read "The Mystery of Banking" by Murray Rothbard.

It's not fraud to loan someone your money and get an IOU in exchange. It's fraud to counterfeit money. You're right about your checking account being an IOU of sorts. Another way of looking at it is that banks have conned everyone into using their IOUs as money instead of dollars, and they own 80% of the IOUs, and charge a toll for using them. It's fraud because banks make you think their IOUs=dollars, when in fact they are definitely not equal because they are not backed 100% by dollars.

Further fraud is caused the Federal Reserve because they counterfeit new dollars, so today's dollar is not the same thing as yesterday's dollar. $(today) != $(yesterday). But the Fed lies to you and makes you think $(today)=$(yesterday) by calling both of them "dollars", hence the fraud. So banks are a fraud on top of a fraud.