Economic Glance
But the state can create its own money. After all, banks do this every day. Certified, card-carrying bankers are allowed to do something nobody else can do: they can create “credit” with accounting entries on their books.
“Banks actually create money when they lend it. Here’s how it works: Most of a bank’s loans are made to its own customers and are deposited in their checking accounts. Because the loan becomes a new deposit, just like a paycheck does, the bank . . . holds a small percentage of that new amount in reserve and again lends the remainder to someone else, repeating the money-creation process many times.”
The unprecedented deficit figures flow from the deep recession, the Wall Street bailout and the cost of President Barack Obama's economic stimulus bill — as well as a seemingly embedded structural imbalance between what the government spends and what it takes in.
The tilt of American policy in favor of the finance industry -- reflected in the policies of recent Treasury Secretaries Timothy Geithner, Henry Paulson and Robert Rubin -- cannot be attributed to any one person or institution. The industry flexes unsurpassed muscle in the political system, backed by billions of dollars invested in candidates and lobbying, a vast grassroots lobbying network of local bankers, the growing centrality of finance in the national economy, and widespread acceptance among public officials of a pro-market, deregulatory philosophy.
