<p>I think your source of confusion is that adding or removing money to account is only one of the steps.</p>
<p>When you borrow two things happen:</p>
<ol>
<li>An amount is added to your account.</li>
<li>You actually use the money - this causes central bank reserves to actually start to move: either given to you as cash when you withdraw or transferred to another bank when you transfer. Therefore the central bank reserves that were locked away begin to circulate either as cash in people's hands or between banks during clearing. So the money in circulation increases.</li>
</ol>
<p>Similar thing happens when the bank pays money for other reasons: such as paying interest on deposits, paying salaries to clerks and other expenses.</p>
<p>Therefore money not just appear out of thin air it comes from the 'vaults' of the banks.</p>
<p>However as long as the money sits on the account unused there is no need to actually keep the corresponding money in the vault. That's the basis of the fractional reserve banking.</p>
<p>When you pay back the loan principal two things happen:</p>
<ol>
<li>First you need to deposit cash or transfer money to your account: this moves reserves into your bank.</li>
<li>The bank removes money from your account. So it cannot be withdrawn or transferred anymore, so the reserves are locked out of circulation, therefore the amount of money in circulation reduces.</li>
</ol>
<p>Similar thing happens when money is paid to bank for other reasons: such as bank service charges, loan interest payments, etc.</p>
<p>Therefore money not just disappear, it goes into the 'vaults' of the banks.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-08-31T15:53:08.527Z
2022-08-31T16:00:08.810Z
2022-08-31T16:00:08.810Z
Calmarius
<p>I don't believe Mike Hall is correct when he states principal repayments plus loan equals a net increase in the money supply.  Principal repaid to a bank is no longer held in a deposit account and is not a liability of the bank. It cancels the equivalent amount of the loan contract asset and is not available to the bank or anyone to spend. It is removed from the money supply permanently.</p>
<p>However, the reserve account balances transferred to the lending bank when principal is repaid, <em>does</em> add to the bank's balance sheet as an asset.  But this only replaces the lost reserves transferred from the bank when the original loan was made.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-05-27T21:51:26.280Z
2023-05-27T21:51:26.280Z
pslebow
<p>I don't believe that Mike Hall's claim that the money supply increases when principal is repaid is correct.  Principal payments are offset by the equivalent reduction in the bank's loan asset. The principal received is not recorded as a liability of the bank in any deposit account and is not available for spending by anyone, including the bank. It is permanently removed from the money supply.</p>
<p>However, the reserve account balances that are transferred to the lending bank when principal is repaid does end up on the asset side of a banks balance sheet but it merely replaces the reserve balances lost when the loan was originally paid out. So the loan process leaves the money supply unchanged.</p>
<p>What <em>does</em> change the money supply is the rate of new loans minus the rate of repayment. If new loans tend to be less than the repayment of existing loans, a shrinking economy, the money supply could theoretically shrink.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-05-27T22:04:50.427Z
2023-05-27T22:04:50.427Z
pslebow
<p>The creation of money occurs when the bank loans out any amount not backed by its reserves to a borrower. The borrower's debt is the excess money. As the borrower pays back the money to the bank, the supply of money in the system contracts. This is of course until the bank lends further against its reserves to another borrower.</p>

<p>Interest payments are akin to money received for a product, that is the loan, and management of the risk held by the bank in lending money. Interest only loans pay for the service of holding the money you and the bank created by borrowing from the bank. Then like all loans, once the payment is made, the supply of money you the borrower created is shrunk. The bank however has made money on the interest.</p>

<p>Over time supply and demand for loans and lending expand and contract the money supply. This coupled with the reserve rate requirements dictated by central banks dictates the supply of money in the system.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-06-13T14:54:24.167Z
2015-06-13T15:03:07.703Z
2015-06-13T15:03:07.703Z
Adam Gornowicz
<p>I appreciate the order of write-off is loss reserve, profits and then capital - but reducing these balances when writing off loans does NOT 'destroy' spendable money in accounting terms. I'll explain why: in double-entry bookkeeping, moving 'money' to a loss reserve keeps it on the debit side of the ledger - the same side that the outstanding balance on a loan account sits (loans are assets to the bank). Therefore, one cannot cancel the other out. Instead, what happens is that a provision for bad debts account is created, and some of the profit sitting in the P&amp;L is moved and credited to it. When the a loan is written-off, the accounting entries are: Debit Bad Debts Account &amp; Credit Loan Account. Doing this does NOT diminish the quantity of 'money' in existence in the bank's accounts.</p>

<p>From the bank's perspective, and in accounting terms, only its customers can 'destroy' money by paying-off their loans and reducing the balances on their bank accounts. It is impossible for the bank to 'destroy' money it has created itself through the act of lending.</p>

<p>However, I do concede that when the bank destroys money by charging its customers interest and moving it to the P&amp;L, that can be used later to write off bad loans - but the money is effectively destroyed when it is taken from customers' accounts.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-06-12T15:42:21.800Z
I beg to differ. It's not a question of just whether or not it's on the debit side of the ledger. Show me a money supply definition, M1, etc. that includes a loss provision ledger. Now I completely agree at the D.E.B. level this is semantics, but when economists design the regulatory controls (or at least try to reason about them), one of the controls in many countries (not the US) is the ratio of central bank reserves to customer deposits.
Lumi
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-06-11T16:21:28.953Z
2015-06-11T18:06:34.143Z
2015-06-11T18:06:34.143Z
Alex Marshall
<p>When an unpaid loan is written off against the bookkeeping profits sitting on a bank's P&amp;L account, the endogenous money supply (total spendable money swilling around the economy) remains unchanged - please correct me if you think I am wrong. </p>

<p>I'll explain this by way of an example: If I take out a loan to buy a car, every time I make a repayment my current account (spendable money) is reduced, as is the outstanding balance on my loan account with the bank - so what was spendable money sitting in my current account effectively disappears into thin air. However, when a bank writes off an unpaid loan it has made to one its customers, it doesn't reduce its own cash reserves, but instead reduces the bookkeeping profit sitting in its Profit and Loss Account - no 'spendable' bank account balances anywhere are reduced by doing this!</p>

<p>The net profit of a bank only becomes 'spendable' money when bookkeeping entries are made to transfer and credit it to customers' (and its own?) bank accounts.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-06-10T14:50:47.667Z
The write-off order is against loss provisions, then profits, and finally capital. Banks are typically required to maintain a certain percentage of loss provisions vs. loans, so when a new loan is made additional deposit money must be moved to loss reserve, and that reduces the effective money supply. If they write off against profits, then that money isn't recognised as income - again an effective drop, and if they have to hit capital, then the regulatory controls become problematic as they can't make a new loan - again, reducing the effective money supply.
Lumi
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-06-10T14:56:11.220Z
I agree there is a very interesting issue lurking behind all this, in whether things like loss provisions and interest income before its recognised, should be counted as part of the money supply or not.
Lumi
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-06-10T09:07:35.580Z
2015-06-10T09:15:17.203Z
2015-06-10T09:15:17.203Z
Alex Marshall
<p>Think in terms of paper money:</p>
<p>the borrower pays off a loan of £5 to a lender by giving the lender a £5 note out of her wage packet: the money in the borrower’s wage packet has been reduced by £5, but the money in the lender’s pocket has been increased by the same £5: net increase in the supply of money = £0.</p>
<p>If the original lender is an ordinary person, the act of lending reduces the money in her pocket by £5 at the same time as it increases the money in the borrower’s pocket by £5.</p>
<p>So here, no money has been created by borrowing, lending, and repaying: all that has happened is a transfer of existing money from lender to borrower and back again.</p>
<p>However, if the loan is made by a bank, then the bank creates the £5 that is loaned and, other things being constant, this counts as an increase in the overall supply of money.</p>
<p>The loan is repaid by the borrower transferring £5 of her money back to the lender bank.</p>
<p>This does reduce the money available to the borrower by £5, but, at the same time, it increases the money available to the lender (the bank) by that same £5: the net increase of the money supply through this repayment is zero, but, overall the bank has increased the supply of money by the £5 it created to make the original loan.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-06-14T10:06:19.037Z
2021-06-14T10:06:19.037Z
Mike Hall
<p>The money is removed when the loan principal is repaid. The actual point in the loan this occurs depends on the loan terms. For a typical compound interest rate loan, this means a small portion of the principal is repaid every month, and a matching liability deposit (money in the customers account) is removed.</p>

<p>For an interest only loan, this occurs at the end of the loan - assuming all the principal is repaid then.</p>

<p>Interest payments essentially circulate through the monetary system. They're deducted from the customer's account, recognised as income by the bank, and then paid out as some form of expense, e.g. salaries, rent, taxes, etc. They may also be moved into an internal account to provide required loss provisions on loans. </p>

<p>Loan defaults are also an expense, and this is the achilles heel of the banking system. If defaults on loans exceed the bank's loss provisions and profits from interest, then the bank will have to write off against its capital - and this interferes with the regulatory controls on lending, causing the money supply to shrink. In practice, central bank or government intervention is inevitable if this occurs.</p>

<p>As far as the relationship of principal to the money supply. Essentially the banking system relies on new lending always being sufficient to replace the money being removed. In most banking systems, new lending is typically in excess of loan repayment, and so we see the money supply more or less continuously expanding. </p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-06-10T05:04:09.697Z
& Please ignore my lack of knowledge on this but what it means is that the reason money is removed out of the cycle is because its getting returned to the bank/lender & is taken out of the circulation, Am I right? So the question is does this principal part although gets taken out of circulation but does it remains in the accounts of the bank own & can they use the same amount received back as a principal repayment to re-lend in the future? & Wouldn't doing this put that sum of money back in the cycle / circulation again?
AndyFlip
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-06-10T14:54:51.273Z
When the principal is reduced, the corresponding deposit is removed from circulation, when a new loan is made, then a corresponding deposit is added to circulation. So the money itself doesn't remain in circulation during this process - it's being continuously removed and re-added. [Rightly or wrongly I tend to think of this part of the system as being a little bit quantum.] Economically speaking it's not just a question of semantics, since the new money is always created as part of a new loan being made, which ties it down in terms of where it's going.
Lumi
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-06-11T06:11:27.427Z
Say a bank creates a loan of USD 100 at rate of 5% for 10-years, so the net amount to be returned back by the borrower to the bank should be approx USD 127 inclusive of principal. So its well understood that when this loan is created it adds $100.00 to the money cycle but the question is that once this loan has been repaid in full, by what amount will it deplete the money cycle: 1. Will it deplete the money cycle by USD100.00 which was the principal of loan or by full USD127.00 which the borrower repaid to the bank?
AndyFlip
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-06-11T06:15:54.337Z
Also to add up to above, its obvious that the USD 27 earned as an interest on the loan by the bank will add up to the profits of the bank but what about the USD 100 which the bank received back in form of principal repayment from the borrower? How will that USD 100 be used up by the respective bank, does it adds up to banks assets, or to the pool of funds of the bank so that they could utilize the same or could lend that same amount of USD 100 ahead once again?
AndyFlip
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-06-11T13:31:25.910Z
It depletes it by 100 - the amount of the principal. The double entry book keeping operations they use are [debit loan 100, credit account 100] to make the loan, and [credit loan 100, debit account 100] to repay the principal. If the bank is within its regulatory constraints then it can issue a new loan, and recreates the deposit. Principal doesn't count as profit at all, but if the loan isn't repaid, then profits have to be used to write-off the loan.
Lumi
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-06-10T02:20:44.503Z
2015-06-10T02:20:44.503Z
Lumi
<p>In a fractional reserve system when banks lend out money, that money is created out of thin air by a accounting journal entry, and the money supply goes up by the amount of the loan &amp; when the loan gets paid off, that money disappears back into thin air and the money supply goes back down which is often also described as "destroying the money"</p>

<p>As under normally amortized loan, out of monthly payments, some part goes towards interest &amp; some towards principal repayment, so the question is does the money equivalent of principal repayment disappears into thin air every time the payment is made towards principal of the loan, or does it only disappears at end of the loan term all at once when the loan has been repaid in full?</p>

<p>If the money gets destroyed or rather disappears from the money cycle every time the principal is repaid from the monthly payments, then does it means that the banks are only left with the interest parts &amp; nothing out of the principal portion on their books?</p>

<p>Also how does the money gets depleted from the money cycle and disappears into thin air in the case of "interest only loans", where during the term of the loan only interest payments are being paid by the borrower &amp; the principal is repaid all at once at the end of the term of loan in form of a single one time payment.</p>

<p>So is it that in such interest only loans because the principal gets repaid all at once at the end of the loan term so at that time immediately it gets depleted from the money cycle all at once &amp; disappears into the thin air?</p>

<p>And most importantly: if all of the money equivalent of the principal amount of loans disappears then how does the banks end up recovering the actual amount loaned by them to the others &amp; not just the interest on that loan?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-02-14T19:46:36.343Z
Not mentioned in any of the replies was the fact that when the borrower fails to pay back the loan, the bank takes ownership, though not happily, of the property the money was created and lent to buy. A house for example. In effect, the house is now a bank asset and offsets, partially, the total amount of money lent.
Red Wine Please
<macroeconomics><money-supply><banking>
How does the money supply behave when bank loans are repaid?
AndyFlip
# How does the money supply behave when bank loans are repaid?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2015-06-09)

In a fractional reserve system when banks lend out money, that money is created out of thin air by a accounting journal entry, and the money supply goes up by the amount of the loan & when the loan gets paid off, that money disappears back into thin air and the money supply goes back down which is often also described as "destroying the money"

As under normally amortized loan, out of monthly payments, some part goes towards interest & some towards principal repayment, so the question is does the money equivalent of principal repayment disappears into thin air every time the payment is made towards principal of the loan, or does it only disappears at end of the loan term all at once when the loan has been repaid in full?

If the money gets destroyed or rather disappears from the money cycle every time the principal is repaid from the monthly payments, then does it means that the banks are only left with the interest parts & nothing out of the principal portion on their books?

Also how does the money gets depleted from the money cycle and disappears into thin air in the case of "interest only loans", where during the term of the loan only interest payments are being paid by the borrower & the principal is repaid all at once at the end of the term of loan in form of a single one time payment.

So is it that in such interest only loans because the principal gets repaid all at once at the end of the loan term so at that time immediately it gets depleted from the money cycle all at once & disappears into the thin air?

And most importantly: if all of the money equivalent of the principal amount of loans disappears then how does the banks end up recovering the actual amount loaned by them to the others & not just the interest on that loan?

**Tags:** macroeconomics, money-supply, banking
> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Not mentioned in any of the replies was the fact that when the borrower fails to pay back the loan, the bank takes ownership, though not happily, of the property the money was created and lent to buy. A house for example. In effect, the house is now a bank asset and offsets, partially, the total amount of money lent.  

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## 8 answers

### Answer by username_6 on 2015-06-10. Score: 9 | Accepted answer

The money is removed when the loan principal is repaid. The actual point in the loan this occurs depends on the loan terms. For a typical compound interest rate loan, this means a small portion of the principal is repaid every month, and a matching liability deposit (money in the customers account) is removed.

For an interest only loan, this occurs at the end of the loan - assuming all the principal is repaid then.

Interest payments essentially circulate through the monetary system. They're deducted from the customer's account, recognised as income by the bank, and then paid out as some form of expense, e.g. salaries, rent, taxes, etc. They may also be moved into an internal account to provide required loss provisions on loans.

Loan defaults are also an expense, and this is the achilles heel of the banking system. If defaults on loans exceed the bank's loss provisions and profits from interest, then the bank will have to write off against its capital - and this interferes with the regulatory controls on lending, causing the money supply to shrink. In practice, central bank or government intervention is inevitable if this occurs.

As far as the relationship of principal to the money supply. Essentially the banking system relies on new lending always being sufficient to replace the money being removed. In most banking systems, new lending is typically in excess of loan repayment, and so we see the money supply more or less continuously expanding.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: & Please ignore my lack of knowledge on this but what it means is that the reason money is removed out of the cycle is because its getting returned to the bank/lender & is taken out of the circulation, Am I right? So the question is does this principal part although gets taken out of circulation but does it remains in the accounts of the bank own & can they use the same amount received back as a principal repayment to re-lend in the future? & Wouldn't doing this put that sum of money back in the cycle / circulation again?  
> **username_6**: When the principal is reduced, the corresponding deposit is removed from circulation, when a new loan is made, then a corresponding deposit is added to circulation. So the money itself doesn't remain in circulation during this process - it's being continuously removed and re-added. [Rightly or wrongly I tend to think of this part of the system as being a little bit quantum.] Economically speaking it's not just a question of semantics, since the new money is always created as part of a new loan being made, which ties it down in terms of where it's going.  
> **username_0**: Say a bank creates a loan of USD 100 at rate of 5% for 10-years, so the net amount to be returned back by the borrower to the bank should be approx USD 127 inclusive of principal. So its well understood that when this loan is created it adds $100.00 to the money cycle but the question is that once this loan has been repaid in full, by what amount will it deplete the money cycle: 1. Will it deplete the money cycle by USD100.00 which was the principal of loan or by full USD127.00 which the borrower repaid to the bank?  
> **username_0**: Also to add up to above, its obvious that the USD 27 earned as an interest on the loan by the bank will add up to the profits of the bank but what about the USD 100 which the bank received back in form of principal repayment from the borrower? How will that USD 100 be used up by the respective bank, does it adds up to banks assets, or to the pool of funds of the bank so that they could utilize the same or could lend that same amount of USD 100 ahead once again?  
> **username_6**: It depletes it by 100 - the amount of the principal. The double entry book keeping operations they use are [debit loan 100, credit account 100] to make the loan, and [credit loan 100, debit account 100] to repay the principal. If the bank is within its regulatory constraints then it can issue a new loan, and recreates the deposit. Principal doesn't count as profit at all, but if the loan isn't repaid, then profits have to be used to write-off the loan.  

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### Answer by username_2 on 2022-08-31. Score: 1

I think your source of confusion is that adding or removing money to account is only one of the steps.

When you borrow two things happen:

1. An amount is added to your account.
2. You actually use the money - this causes central bank reserves to actually start to move: either given to you as cash when you withdraw or transferred to another bank when you transfer. Therefore the central bank reserves that were locked away begin to circulate either as cash in people's hands or between banks during clearing. So the money in circulation increases.

Similar thing happens when the bank pays money for other reasons: such as paying interest on deposits, paying salaries to clerks and other expenses.

Therefore money not just appear out of thin air it comes from the 'vaults' of the banks.

However as long as the money sits on the account unused there is no need to actually keep the corresponding money in the vault. That's the basis of the fractional reserve banking.

When you pay back the loan principal two things happen:

1. First you need to deposit cash or transfer money to your account: this moves reserves into your bank.
2. The bank removes money from your account. So it cannot be withdrawn or transferred anymore, so the reserves are locked out of circulation, therefore the amount of money in circulation reduces.

Similar thing happens when money is paid to bank for other reasons: such as bank service charges, loan interest payments, etc.

Therefore money not just disappear, it goes into the 'vaults' of the banks.


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### Answer by username_3 on 2023-05-27. Score: 0

I don't believe Mike Hall is correct when he states principal repayments plus loan equals a net increase in the money supply. Principal repaid to a bank is no longer held in a deposit account and is not a liability of the bank. It cancels the equivalent amount of the loan contract asset and is not available to the bank or anyone to spend. It is removed from the money supply permanently.

However, the reserve account balances transferred to the lending bank when principal is repaid, *does* add to the bank's balance sheet as an asset. But this only replaces the lost reserves transferred from the bank when the original loan was made.


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### Answer by username_3 on 2023-05-27. Score: 0

I don't believe that Mike Hall's claim that the money supply increases when principal is repaid is correct. Principal payments are offset by the equivalent reduction in the bank's loan asset. The principal received is not recorded as a liability of the bank in any deposit account and is not available for spending by anyone, including the bank. It is permanently removed from the money supply.

However, the reserve account balances that are transferred to the lending bank when principal is repaid does end up on the asset side of a banks balance sheet but it merely replaces the reserve balances lost when the loan was originally paid out. So the loan process leaves the money supply unchanged.

What *does* change the money supply is the rate of new loans minus the rate of repayment. If new loans tend to be less than the repayment of existing loans, a shrinking economy, the money supply could theoretically shrink.


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### Answer by username_4 on 2015-06-13. Score: 0

The creation of money occurs when the bank loans out any amount not backed by its reserves to a borrower. The borrower's debt is the excess money. As the borrower pays back the money to the bank, the supply of money in the system contracts. This is of course until the bank lends further against its reserves to another borrower.

Interest payments are akin to money received for a product, that is the loan, and management of the risk held by the bank in lending money. Interest only loans pay for the service of holding the money you and the bank created by borrowing from the bank. Then like all loans, once the payment is made, the supply of money you the borrower created is shrunk. The bank however has made money on the interest.

Over time supply and demand for loans and lending expand and contract the money supply. This coupled with the reserve rate requirements dictated by central banks dictates the supply of money in the system.


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### Answer by username_5 on 2015-06-11. Score: 0

I appreciate the order of write-off is loss reserve, profits and then capital - but reducing these balances when writing off loans does NOT 'destroy' spendable money in accounting terms. I'll explain why: in double-entry bookkeeping, moving 'money' to a loss reserve keeps it on the debit side of the ledger - the same side that the outstanding balance on a loan account sits (loans are assets to the bank). Therefore, one cannot cancel the other out. Instead, what happens is that a provision for bad debts account is created, and some of the profit sitting in the P&L is moved and credited to it. When the a loan is written-off, the accounting entries are: Debit Bad Debts Account & Credit Loan Account. Doing this does NOT diminish the quantity of 'money' in existence in the bank's accounts.

From the bank's perspective, and in accounting terms, only its customers can 'destroy' money by paying-off their loans and reducing the balances on their bank accounts. It is impossible for the bank to 'destroy' money it has created itself through the act of lending.

However, I do concede that when the bank destroys money by charging its customers interest and moving it to the P&L, that can be used later to write off bad loans - but the money is effectively destroyed when it is taken from customers' accounts.

> **Comments:**
> **username_6**: I beg to differ. It's not a question of just whether or not it's on the debit side of the ledger. Show me a money supply definition, M1, etc. that includes a loss provision ledger. Now I completely agree at the D.E.B. level this is semantics, but when economists design the regulatory controls (or at least try to reason about them), one of the controls in many countries (not the US) is the ratio of central bank reserves to customer deposits.  

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### Answer by username_5 on 2015-06-10. Score: 0

When an unpaid loan is written off against the bookkeeping profits sitting on a bank's P&L account, the endogenous money supply (total spendable money swilling around the economy) remains unchanged - please correct me if you think I am wrong.

I'll explain this by way of an example: If I take out a loan to buy a car, every time I make a repayment my current account (spendable money) is reduced, as is the outstanding balance on my loan account with the bank - so what was spendable money sitting in my current account effectively disappears into thin air. However, when a bank writes off an unpaid loan it has made to one its customers, it doesn't reduce its own cash reserves, but instead reduces the bookkeeping profit sitting in its Profit and Loss Account - no 'spendable' bank account balances anywhere are reduced by doing this!

The net profit of a bank only becomes 'spendable' money when bookkeeping entries are made to transfer and credit it to customers' (and its own?) bank accounts.

> **Comments:**
> **username_6**: The write-off order is against loss provisions, then profits, and finally capital. Banks are typically required to maintain a certain percentage of loss provisions vs. loans, so when a new loan is made additional deposit money must be moved to loss reserve, and that reduces the effective money supply. If they write off against profits, then that money isn't recognised as income - again an effective drop, and if they have to hit capital, then the regulatory controls become problematic as they can't make a new loan - again, reducing the effective money supply.  
> **username_6**: I agree there is a very interesting issue lurking behind all this, in whether things like loss provisions and interest income before its recognised, should be counted as part of the money supply or not.  

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### Answer by username_7 on 2021-06-14. Score: -1

Think in terms of paper money:

the borrower pays off a loan of £5 to a lender by giving the lender a £5 note out of her wage packet: the money in the borrower’s wage packet has been reduced by £5, but the money in the lender’s pocket has been increased by the same £5: net increase in the supply of money = £0.

If the original lender is an ordinary person, the act of lending reduces the money in her pocket by £5 at the same time as it increases the money in the borrower’s pocket by £5.

So here, no money has been created by borrowing, lending, and repaying: all that has happened is a transfer of existing money from lender to borrower and back again.

However, if the loan is made by a bank, then the bank creates the £5 that is loaned and, other things being constant, this counts as an increase in the overall supply of money.

The loan is repaid by the borrower transferring £5 of her money back to the lender bank.

This does reduce the money available to the borrower by £5, but, at the same time, it increases the money available to the lender (the bank) by that same £5: the net increase of the money supply through this repayment is zero, but, overall the bank has increased the supply of money by the £5 it created to make the original loan.


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