Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Does fractional reserves cause cycles?

What is a reserve ratio?  Investopedia says:
The reserve ratio is the portion of reservable liabilities that depository institutions must hold onto, rather than lend out or invest. This is a requirement determined by the country's central bank, which in the United States is the Federal Reserve.

So if we hold onto 100% then we are not lending anything?

In my world the currency issuer is a spreadsheet function, unable to recognize property rights.   Who backs the loans? Depositors, the spreadsheet function backs the matching error only, market uncertainty due to serialization of trades in the ledger system.

Do depositors back loans 100%  normally? No, mostly 85 to 95%, they deposit money for the specific purpose of taking risk, as do the borrowers.  They are betting, who gets real or inflated prices.  Money is equity, this is a money market, let the equity trades happen.

Is this really how it works today in the central bank world? Depositor function is greatly complicated by insurance, implicit and explicit government backing, term loans and restricted entry and exit clouding prices.  If we went through all the regulations and price fixings, sort them out, we would find the depositors mostly back loans, sooner or later.  It is the later that causes cycles.

Cycles happen, in this economy,  because government assumes term risk and gets bailed out as a result, it is as simple as that.  The way to remove cycles is use adjustable, asynchronous interest charges for the currency issuer.  When indicated,, the currency issuer set current interest charges immediately  such that depositors more better match borrowers than they did before.  The currency issuer is the first to deliver the monetary innovation. Currency issuer needs support for cash in advance for prequalled accounts. In other words, it is a margin account system.  The term structure is a separate construction by insurance functions outside of no arb cash laye.  Yes, insurance companies can cause cycles.  Seignoriage is the other big problem.

The pure cash layer generates a uniform random matching error, there are no noticeable cycles at that layer.  We still get defaults and mis-pricings and snooker by tech titans and so forth.  But at the cash layer, we just get honest, on the scene reporting of the aggregate money accounts, always to within some known, bound error.

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