Quote from: NeuroticFish on September 18, 2018, 06:53:56 AM

Quote from: fxsurfer on September 17, 2018, 08:15:21 AM

In other words, column B and column C are basically the same thing - a number. It is just that column C uses alphabetic symbols, while column B uses numerical symbols.

If we go by your type of explanation, since your bank account contains some numbers and characters, it's actually worthless.
And then I have 2 questions:
1. Why do you pay for it (the bank is charging you for that account)?
2. Why don't you just donate to charity those worthless numbers from your account written under "balance"?

You are correct. Numbers in the bank accounts are worthless since the banks created them out of thin air. These numbers are just quantifiers of the obligations of the borrowers to repay their loans. Now, if borrowers have obligations, then it means that someone else has a claim. So, who has a claim? Well, both the banks, and owners of money that is created via loans. The banks because they formally issued the loans to the borrowers, and the owners of money because they literally credited borrowers with land, cars, houses and other valuable things when they traded them for the loan-created money. These two facts are formally recorded in the balance sheets of the banks. Specifically, when a bank grants a loan, the loan contract is shown both, as an increase in banks assets because the bank now has an additional claim on borrowers, and as a positive entry on the liability side of the banks balance sheet, because money owners now have an additional claim on the bank. And a claim is property in the fullest sense of that term, that it has its own value, and it may be sold, transferred, mortgaged, and inherited. Numbers in the bank accounts are worthless symbols whose only purpose is to express or measure the size of the claims in a banking system.