ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates that even now the fact of the creation of bank money by bankers is not universally accepted. The formulation of precise definitions in the study of monetary problems is misleading. It creates a spurious atmosphere of certainty and exactitude which is not justified by the elementary stage to which the practice of currency has arrived. Currency is a mystery, a craft, an art, rather than a science. It is a mixture of mathematics and psychology that has not yet been reduced to scientific precision. Bank money is a by-product of banking activities. Without intending to do so, every time a bank makes a loan, or purchases a security, it creates money. Many bankers to this very day deny that they do any such thing. They claim that they only lend money deposited into their charge by the public, and that for every loan they make they have a corresponding value of deposits.
