The “accounting view” of money: money as equity (Part III)
In part I of this blog, we discussed the implications of our proposed “Accounting View” of money as it applies to legal tender. In part II, we further elaborated on the implications of the new approach, with specific reference to commercial bank money. We conclude our treatment of commercial bank money in this part, starting from where we left, that is, the double (accounting) nature of commercial bank (sight) deposits as debt or equity.
Bank deposits: debt, equity, or both…?
This double nature is stochastic in as much as, at issuance, every deposit unit can be debt (if, with a certain probability, the issuing bank receives requests for cash conversion or interbank settlement) and equity (with complementary probability). Faced with such a stochastic double nature, a commercial bank finds it convenient to provision the deposit unit issued with an amount of reserves that equals only the expected value of the associated debt event, rather than the full value of the deposit unit issued.
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