Fractional Reserve Banking and Casinos
Long story, but my six-year-old son was asking me to explain gambling. I told him about how you go into a casino and give them money for chips. Then I was explaining Blackjack, and told him about betting $10 etc. on a hand.
He stopped me and asked me to clarify. Was the person betting chips or betting money? I had been using the terms interchangeably.
“Oh,” I explained, “you give the casino your money, and they give you chips that represent the money. So it’s like you are gambling with your money, it’s just more convenient.”
Then, as I’m continuing with the tutorial in Blackjack, of course my mind is building all kinds of parallels with fractional reserve banking. For example, would it be illegal for the casino to give players a loan of chips, that wasn’t 100% backed by the casino’s own funds? I.e. at any given time, could there be a run on the house? I would tend to think every chip in play is backed 100% by cash, but maybe I’m wrong?
If I’m right, isn’t it funny that commercial banks are allowed to do things that would be illegal for a casino to do?
And if I’m wrong, well then, uh, isn’t it funny that commercial banks operate just like casinos??!! (See what I did there?)
“And if I’m wrong, well then, uh, isn’t it funny that commercial banks operate just like casinos??!! (See what I did there?)”
And just like insurance companies!
It seems to me that there’s some crucial difference in the practices that has kept insurers from having to cartelize just to honor agreements, and eventually demand the government become a lender of last resort for them.
Or perhaps there’s a history of the insurance industry across various countries I’m not aware of in which exactly this happens?
” that has kept insurers from having to cartelize just to honor agreements”
Banks also did not “have to cartelize” to honor agreements — free banking has worked perfectly well when actually tried, as demonstrated by White and Selgin.
Yes, just like insurance companies, the only difference being that you don’t pay an insurance company to keep the tantundem available at all times as one does with banking. In other words, not like insurance at all.
” from having to cartelize just to honor agreements”
Where is your evidence that banks “had to cartelize,” rather than that simply succeeded in doing so? Free banking apparently worked just fine when it was actually done as free banking — see Selgin and White.
Free banking apparently worked just fine when it was actually done as free banking — see Selgin and White.
Free banking suffered from bank failures due to banks being overextended in terms of loans, which then gave the appearance of the necessity of bank cartelization under a central bank possible, which was the only way for banks to honor their agreements. – See Rothbard.
Well, Major, why not see people who did real scholarship in this area, like Selgin and White?
Notwithstanding their intimidating intellects, Selgin and White are wrong about this issue.
Just trying to put this in the right place:
You don’t pay a bank to keep your deposit available at all times either. In fact, the bank will pay YOU for granting it the ability to lend out your deposit.
By “pay” I didn’t mean pay interest, or a fee. I meant pay as in you pay the bank your money, and they keep the tantundem of that money available at all times.
In fact, the bank will pay YOU for granting it the ability to lend out your deposit.
Paying interest on demand deposits is only done to make it appear as if the demand deposit is a loan, when it really isn’t. That’s why the interest rate is always so low. It’s for symbolism.
Demand deposits cannot be a grant to the bank to lend it out and transfer ownership to a third party. You’re talking about loans that result in ownership transfer from depositor to the bank.
All these old and long ago refuted excuses to justify FRB cannot all of a sudden become valid by being constantly repeated.
“By “pay” I didn’t mean pay interest, or a fee. I meant pay as in you pay the bank your money…”
You don’t “pay” the bank your money! You deposit it with them.
Bob, why do you keep letting a four-year old comment on your blog?
You don’t “pay” the bank your money! You deposit it with them.
Duly noted. My verbiage is not always up to snuff.
Bob, why do you keep letting a four-year old comment on your blog
You sound mad.
What type of insurance companies?
I have no special knowledge of this topic, but I’d like to unhelpfully point out that a crucial plot point in Ocean’s Eleven is that Nevada law requires casinos to have some absurdly high amount of cash on hand to honor winnings and redemptions to the point that these kind of loans you describe would be verboten.
That’s just one state, of course, and fiction.
Even if the casinos never made loans there must be a (vanishingly small) chance that everyone will beat the house and the total value of chips in play will be worth more than the sum of chips bought.
Silas
I saw you now using the German word “verboten” several times. Is it just your habit, or is it common to use it? I hope it is not another software issue with you name capture software…
I don’t know, I just felt it seemed appropriate (and perhaps, “hip”) a few times in a row. I do speak German at the conversational level, though I don’t think that’s a factor.
Just be lucky your screen name doesn’t have a space, skylien!
“Just be lucky your screen name doesn’t have a space, skylien!”
I really am a lucky bastard. 🙂
WTF? You don’t get cash from casinos merely by using their chips for a couple of hours!
If I’m right, isn’t it funny that commercial banks are allowed to do things that would be illegal for a casino to do?
And if I’m wrong, well then, uh, isn’t it funny that commercial banks operate just like casinos??!! (See what I did there?)
LOL, that’s awesome.
BTW, regarding the laws:
In California casinos:
The gaming licensee must have proof of a separate account with funds sufficient to cover all chips in play at any time.
For Nevada:
(http://gaming.nv.gov/stats_regs/reg6.pdf)
Regulations of the Nevada Gaming Commission and State Gaming Control Board, Regulation 6 (Accounting), §150 (3):
Minimum bankroll requirements:
“Each nonrestricted licensee and each person licensed as an operator of an inter-casino linked system shall maintain, in such manner as the chairman may approve or require, cash or cash equivalents in an amount sufficient to reasonably protect the licensee’s or operator’s patrons against defaults in gaming debts owed by the licensee or operator […]. Failure to maintain the minimum bankroll required by this section, or a higher bankroll as required by the chairman pursuant to this section, or failure to notify the board of any deficiencies, is an unsuitable method of operation.”
The specific bankroll requirement varies from operator to operator (couple slot machines in a bar = high, big casino = low) but is always less than 100%.
So in the case of Nevada at least, it’s “fractional reserve chipping!”
“So in the case of Nevada at least, it’s “fractional reserve chipping!””
Does that mean that Rothbardians will want to make it illegal ?
Not all Rothbardians agree completely with Rothbard’s free banking analysis. I am one of those.
I assumed that support for 100% reserve banking was the defining attribute of Rothbardian v non-Rothbardian Austrians.
Do you think it is more complicated than that (genuine question – not a jab) ?
Actually, there is far more Rothbardian theory that is different than say Misesian or Hayekian theory. Most of it has to do with the structure of production. Mises theory of production was awesome, but wasn’t quite as complete as Rothbard’s (Rothbard filled many gaps). Also, Rothbard’s work with regard to Monopoly is way different than Mises.
It is not that I disagree with Rothbard’s ideas on free banking necessarily, it is only that I don’t find his connection with natural law to be complete. For instance, Rothbard would have gold be money, I would allow competition. Also, with regard to fractional-reserves, I do not see a problem with people accepting receipts just so long as they know that their money (in this case commodity money) is not in the vault.
I am just only beginning to work on this, but what I am trying to put together is a free banking system that takes a lot of Rothbard’s ideas and a lot of Selgin’s ideas. I would like to see both systems allowed to compete. Now, I will say that I ultimately believe that Rothbard’s side would win out in the end, but that I would wish to have the market decide that.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention the biggest difference between Rothbard and other Austrians, and that is that Rothbard doesn’t believe in any monopoly force (government). Some would say that most of this falls into political theory,which Rothbard definitely delved into a lot; but, Rothbard actually used a lot of economic theory to make his case for no government, as well. I won’t get into it here, but ‘Man, Economy and State’ is probably the best source for everything that I have described.
“If I’m right, isn’t it funny that commercial banks are allowed to do things that would be illegal for a casino to do?”
Isn’t it worse than that? The risks in a casino are constant and known (the chance of winning at slots, roulette, etc.). There is no correlation risk. With banks the risk are variable, unknown, and when things get bad they all tend sour. So BANKS are the ones that are allowed to do this?
That’s an interesting analogy and it concretizes something that has always bothered me with the Rothbardian argument against FRB. The whole “storage” idea (bank deposits akin grain storage) leaves out a fundamental fact about the derivative value that is inherent in the use of money as medium of exchange. I’m sure we all know that “money” (e.g. bank deposits) has value relative to the goods that they represent just as “poker chips” have value relative to the “cash” that the casino represents. In both cases the conversion of ones goods into cash and the conversion of ones cash into chips represents the same thing, both are tied, at root, as a claim against goods. But this is where the arguments against FRB breaks down because both types of claims do not represent claims against existing goods, they represent claims against future goods. All arguments against FRB fail to acknowledge this fact. Money (and chips) are only useful because they represent a claim against future production, i.e. the “value” of the currency has no meaning outside of that context. Selling ones current production in a market in exchange for “money” (i.e. future claims), aggregating those claims it in a bank (bank deposits) and loaning those claims to someone else to use to keep the cyclical process going is very nearly what happens in a casino, albeit one step more removed and, at the end of the day, is more of a zero sum game rather than the win/win of the productive process. But, despite of this minor detail the essential point still holds. And that is that FRB Banks do not create “money” out of thin air just as the casinos do not create “chips” out of thin air. That is just an illusion that misdirects attention away from what is really going on and that is the fact that a “loan” based on bank deposits of money is itself a future claim, just like the money that was deposited into it. Both are future claims, money is just a “shorter” term claim than a loan. In aggregating these short term claims in a bank the bank gains an efficiency that did not exist before, and that is the ability to create longer term claims from the shorter ones an thereby expand the cyclical range of production available to the people who are good and producing things.
FRB is not fraud, not so long as the value of the currency it “creates out of thin air” are based on claims to future goods that will exist.
> FRB is not fraud, not so long as the value of the currency it “creates out of thin air” are based on claims to future goods that will exist.
And if we are less than 100% certain that these future goods will exist and be available for exchange, would the door thus be opened to fraud?
I framed it that way specifically to illustrate the fact that by accepting a currency (rather than direct barter) you are already expecting that those future goods will exist when you go to buy them.
> by accepting a currency (rather than direct barter) you are already expecting that those future goods will exist when you go to buy them.
Do you mean that by merely holding a currency, I am implicitly 100% certain that these future goods will be available for exchange?
If I deposit a good at a warehouse in exchange for a warehouse ticket, I would certainly expect to exchange that for the good I deposited at a later date. Nonetheless, a fractional reserve warehouse inherently includes the possibility of the expectation being violated.
“Do you mean that by merely holding a currency, I am implicitly 100% certain that these future goods will be available for exchange?”
No.
“Nonetheless, a fractional reserve warehouse inherently includes the possibility of the expectation being violated.”
So does accepting a currency instead of direct barter. And so does the acceptance of a warehouse ticket. Both require an expectation that the future goods will be there when you present the claim, whether its at a market or a warehouse. There is no 100% garuntee that the goods you have deposited in a warehouse will be there tomorrow.
The only difference is a matter of degree and your own, personal, risk tolerance preference.
Would you agree that a fractional reserve warehouse is inherently fraudulent?
And that a non-fraudulent (read: bailment) warehouse offers the highest possible certainty that I will be able to exchange my ticket for my deposited good? i.e. there is no endogenous risk, only exogenous (war, acts of nature or god, etc.)
Forgive me if I’ve used any terms imprecisely. I hope the gist is clear.
Would you agree that a fractional reserve warehouse is inherently fraudulent?
No. For the same reason that an FRB is not.
If you want the highest possible certainty of exchange (least endo or exo risk) then you would use an immediate barter and exchange for some other good that had less of those types of risk, based on your own judgement.
The point is that so long as you produce more than you consume, the excess not consumed (lets “controversially” call it “savings”) will necessarily entail some form of risk (i.e. the possibility it can diminish in some way over time) so the choice to convert your savings into cash (which is done automatically in an advanced economy) is, at root, a choice to use a “ticket” that is not backed by anyone in particular but backed by goods that will be offered for sale at some point in the future. Which is fundamentally the same as putting your “tickets” into a bank in exchange for another “ticket” (i.e. an implicit promise) that they will be there at some point in the future. Just as it is impossible to guarantee that the goods backing the cash you received today will be the same goods available when you go to buy something tomorrow so too is it impossible to guarantee that the cash you loan to another (e.g. a bank) will be there tomorrow. Life entails risk, currency and banking is just one means of controlling that risk.
@RS
Just noting that you’ve completely lost me when your view is that bailment may be performed on a fractional reserve basis. This is elementary fraud. It’s like the bank giving a second set of your safety deposit box keys to a stranger.
@Rick
i think i misunderstood your question so i will reiterate.
like I said in my original post. I do not think that a grain warehouse is analogous to a money warehouse i.e. bank for the very reason that grain
is not money and does not have the same properties.
You don’t pay a bank to keep your deposit available at all times either. In fact, the bank will pay YOU for granting it the ability to lend out your deposit.
Oops, that was a reply to Major Doofus above. but for some reason it showed up here.
How can that be a reply to me? I just said what the California and Nevada state laws are regarding casinos.
I think you have me confused for one of your demonic personalities that you continue to fight, using real humans as means.
Ah, I know what you’re referring to now. It’s when I said this:
“Yes, just like insurance companies, the only difference being that you don’t pay an insurance company to keep the tantundem available at all times as one does with banking. In other words, not like insurance at all.”
By “pay” I didn’t mean pay interest, or a fee. I meant pay as in you pay them your money, and they keep the tantundem of that money available at all times.
“FRB is not fraud, not so long as the value of the currency it “creates out of thin air” are based on claims to future goods that will exist.”
No, no, no. Money is not a “claim” on anything! If it was, the money issuer would have to guarantee you a certain amount of goods at a future date, and no money issuer, not even under the gold standard, ever does that. Money IS a good itself, and its value against future goods fluctuates just like any other good — that’s straight out of Mises.
Nonsense Gene, you accept money for your time with the expectation that someone else will accept it from you for theirs. That is the only way a division of labor can work. Its a claim against “x’s” future production, if and when “y” decides to exchange it.
Sorry, Gene is right. A claim would be enforceable. But you cannot claim that someone has to give you something for your money, you only can ask/bid. Thats all.
Money is a “claim” only in the sense that it “commands” future goods that are offered for sale. It does not impose any unchosen obligation on anyone to produce those goods or to sell them, nor is such an obligation required. Insofar as goods are offered for sale, then the money offered and accepted represents a claim against them. The exact ratio in any given transaction in any given moment is market driven and it is why and how prices transmit information to all potential participants.
Then it is about semantics. You use “claim” differently than Gene.
Right, skylien. This idea that money is a “claim” is totally un-Misesian — as well as being wrong.
As much as I hate to do it, I am going to have to agree with Gene here.
Yikes! What is going on, I am agreeing with Gene way too much lately…
😉
oh, and one more thing. Its not the value of the “money” that fluctuates over time, it is the value of your “labor” i.e. your time spent on production that fluctuates. if what you do today to earn $100 is only worth $10 tomorrow then you better find yourself a more productive use of your time 😉
What if there was price deflation of 90% ?
then the value of your labor would be worth 90% more today than what it was yesterday.
You’re getting dangerously close to saying there is a “price level” Why would my labor be worth 90% more. It could be the case that due to my particular job, that my labor is worth only 40% more, or possibly 200% more. That’s kind of like saying, “inflation is 20%, so I will pay 20% more for products that I buy”. This isn’t necessarily true, prices don’t rise in uniform fashion and I don’t make the same purchases as the other guy. It could be the case that I am paying only 1% more.
thats true but I was coming at the issue from a “goods” oriented perspective where the value of one person’s labor was held constant, then all else equal, if prices go down by 90% my labor now commands that much more.
No worries. I know about the Cantillon effect. This was merely a response to RS who makes a very strange statement that money doesn’t change its value but only labor does… The Cantillon effect wasn’t the issue here. I only wanted to see if he really meant what he said. It seems he does not.
Money is nothing more than a good, the only difference is that it is valued for its use in exchange. If you think about money in terms of a good, then you can then use supply and demand curves just as you would with any other good. Just like other goods, money has a price, we call this PPM. So, if you start to compare prices to prices, it begins to make more sense.
Also, labor is merely the expenditure of human effort. Of course, in an economy like ours, we often purchase labor for the service that it provides. The price of this labor is a wage. Once again, compare supply and demand curves with labor just as you can with other goods. Further, you can compare prices of labor just as you can with PPM or other goods.
I am not trying to talk down to you, but it often helps me to think of things in this way when discussing changes in the supply or demand for labor, money, goods or services.
So no need to look for a more productive use of my time. And money changed its value in this case not labor.
This is the answer on the post by RS:
“then the value of your labor would be worth 90% more today than what it was yesterday.”
I have some problems with this post:
1: My post appeared on the wrong place.
2: Every time I want to repost at the right place I get a Word Press failure message…
Gene’s correct.
If Gene is correct, then what purpose does a currency serve? Is it an end in itself or a means to some other end?
For currency to be “claimless” in the sense that I have previously described, it would have to be useful for its own sake and not for anything else i.e. a final good.
Are you gonig to take the position that “value” is somehow inherent in the currency itself, independent of the people who use it?
Please read Mises on what money is.
“For currency to be “claimless” in the sense that I have previously described, it would have to be useful for its own sake and not for anything else i.e. a final good.”
Ah, so let’s take a hammer. Is a hammer a “claim” on some other good? Clearly not. Then per your criterion, it must be a final good. (And no, final goods are not “useful” for the own sake — “useful” means being used to achieve something else — but *valued* for their own sake.)
So, since hammers are not claims on other goods, all the purchasers of hammers just but them for their intrinsic loveliness.
Ooh, not “just but them,” but “just buy them”!
meant to say theorem, not theory
crap, the comment section is all kinds of whacky today. My comments aren’t going where I want them.
Bob, you really got to get to the bottom of this with WordPress. I don’t know anybody else’s WordPress blog that has the same problems as yours. But, then again, I don’t know many WordPress blogger that get as many comments as you do.
From my above statement, “Taxation surely never prevented other fiat currency’s value from going to zero.”
Would your rebuttal to this be that those countries simply didn’t tax enough?
RS, I posted a response to you above, though it probably would have made more sense to have posted here. Go up just a little bit, you’ll see it.
Money is useful for exchange (the regression theory explain why fiat money has value). No, I don’t believe in intrinsic value.
Taxes explain why fiat money has value.
And it’s never too late to learn about what is money
http://moslereconomics.com/mandatory-readings/what-is-money/
I don’t know if you remember, but about 6 months ago (maybe longer) I did ask you for some books to read on MMT. I did and I disagree. Taxation surely never prevented other fiat currency’s value from going to zero.
BTW, “I did” means that I did in fact read Mosler.
From my above statement, “Taxation surely never prevented other fiat currency’s value from going to zero.”
Would your rebuttal to this be that those countries simply didn’t tax enough?
Yes, they didn’t tax enough.
But I agree that taxes are necessary but not sufficient to give value to fiat currency.
I thought you could only get the chips by purchasing them with an equivalent amount of money? As far as I know, you can’t take out casino chips on credit, so the amount of cash held should equal the amount of “chips outstanding”
Pff, that’s just an archaic, gold-standard-era view. Modern economists have moderated this extremism, in recognizing that sometimes the needs of the greater gambling system require that converibility be suspended, even though some people still feebly whine about some preconceived “right” to redeem your chips back for money.
Please! What do *rights* matter when the gambling system needs to be stabilized? You don’t want to live under the rule of the rentiers, do you? After all, we hold the money, so they can whine about their chips and their “past promises” and “contracts” all they want — at the end of the day, we can just tell them to buzz off, even if we have to speak with a Smith & Wesson.
Silas, why didn’t you tremendous (by your own testimony) “reasoning” abilities spot that kavram was babbling nonsense? Of course, the casino got money for every chip outstanding — let’s say, 10 bettors put up $1000 each. But let’s assume every bettor goes to the roulette wheel. And every bettor puts her money on the same number — logically possible, right? And that number comes up. The house took in $10,000, but now owes $350,000. The fact that the amount of chips outstanding equals the amount of dollars collected has nothing to do with whether or not casinos can be bankrupted by an unlucky “run on the casino.”
Just some thoughts, when we talk about chips in play are we including the houses chips? It would seem to me that In order for every chip to be covered the Casino must have cash on hand to cover the house bet. So as long as the casino has the cash on hand to cover its bet then there is no contradiction, there can not be a run. Only when we take them out of the equation and pretend that they are not taking the other side of the bet that it becomes FR.
That is certainly a good point.
Take a breather, dude. It was satire.
And IIRC if everyone simultaneously won on the routlette wheel, the casinos generally reserve the right (with the blessing of local gaming commissions) to pay a reduced amount or otherwise delay payments.
Isn’t that exactly how they dealt with bank runs prior to the FDIC?
Right you are. But that has nothing to do with the amount of “potential pay-outs outstanding.”
Cause you know, there are odds.
but casinos run on the law of large numbers, not single instances of win or loss. For every player that hits the jackpot, more than enough will have lost chips to the house in order to cover their “liabilities.”
Of course there are odds, but the profitable casino always ensures that those odds are in their favor, and then let the law of averages do the rest
Which means casinos will always be able to redeem all the chips you’ve purchased from them.
But, as Gene pointed out, they might not be able to redeem all the new chips they might issue in case you win.
So they operate more like states than like banks.
The question is why aren’t you allowed to leave the casino with your chips if you want to? Are they worth more than what you pay for them?
Or is it just a strategy so you lose your money and your chips?
Where do you gamble where you can’t leave with your chips? In Vegas, for example, most casinos will accept chips from other casinos. Outside Vegas or AC it is usually just a pain if you leave with your chips though. I once left a river boat casino in Indiana with a $100 chip in my pocket. It was too long of a drive to go back so I still have the damn thing ten years later.
I must agree, that’s pretty ridiculous. In fact, I often convert my chips to larger denominations to ease the burden when I leave rather than cash out.
Sorry, I thought that’s what kavram said. Clearly I never wasted my time in a casino.
No, kavram said that you could not take out chips on credit. That has nothing to do with whether you can walk out of a casino with chips in your pocket.
Or, more specifically, “you can’t take out casino chips on credit.” You know what he meant.
Somehow I ignored the on credit part, and was puzzled.
I’ve only been to a casino once, in Montecarlo, had a martini, stirred, not shaken, took out the good guy, and left.
uh, isn’t it funny that commercial banks operate just like casinos?
Bob uses money. Casinos use money. Isn’t it funny that Bob operates just like a casino?
The state makes use of tax money. Bob makes use of tax money (driving on the roads, for instance). Isn’t it funny that Bob operates just like a state?
This is the most unfunny thread ever.
Because it shows the nonsense of a position you like.
Actually I agree with the position you and Blackadder are taking.
It’s just really unfunny.
OK.
Blackadder quoted me saying:
uh, isn’t it funny that commercial banks operate just like casinos?
And then Blackadder wrote in response:
Bob uses money. Casinos use money. Isn’t it funny that Bob operates just like a casino?
Well congratulations Blackadder. You (a) explained my own joke to me and (b) missed an obvious bit of humor that Major Freedom totally picked up (in the beginning here). And I bet you like to think you are far wittier than Major Freedom.
If you ever bump into Rowan Atkinson, you should say, “I really liked your earlier work, but that Mr. Bean guy is just not very intelligent. Are you always tired or something when you shoot those skits? What’s your problem?”
You’re not allowed to be funny while “Very Serious People” are busy trying to clean up the mess their role models have made.
You’re supposed to be serious like they are, except when they aren’t, and THEN you can joke around.