Silver Barron you beat me to it, was reading this from the start and wanted to mention this. Glad you did.
The reason Fractional Reserve Banking IMO is practically theft is because the bank provides a service to you in that you store your dollars there short term for a REALLY crap interest rate BECAUSE you can get your funds at any one time on demand. They then can lend those dollars out LONG term to a borrower for an asset like a house. Now sure they have the house as collateral should the borrower default so they have the correct or more assets than is what they have as liabilities.
BUT the only reason this survives is because they rely on no one large group of people needing those funds all at once. It is a perfect PONZI scheme in which poor Bernie Madoff is spending several life terms in jail for doing EXACTLY the same thing.
Get 5% of the $worth of the Australian population to go into a bank tomorrow and attempt to withdraw all of their funds and tell me the result is and that it isn't theft.
The reason Fractional Reserve Banking IMO is practically theft is because the bank provides a service to you in that you store your dollars there short term for a REALLY crap interest rate BECAUSE you can get your funds at any one time on demand. They then can lend those dollars out LONG term to a borrower for an asset like a house. Now sure they have the house as collateral should the borrower default so they have the correct or more assets than is what they have as liabilities.
BUT the only reason this survives is because they rely on no one large group of people needing those funds all at once. It is a perfect PONZI scheme in which poor Bernie Madoff is spending several life terms in jail for doing EXACTLY the same thing.
Get 5% of the $worth of the Australian population to go into a bank tomorrow and attempt to withdraw all of their funds and tell me the result is and that it isn't theft.