Where does money come from?

Quite often I give talks about money creation and quite often people do not believe that banks create money out of nothing. In this video of less than two minutes two economists, Dirk Bezemer (Associate Professor, University of Groningen) and Michael Kumhof (IMF Economist), give a short and clear explanation of the process of money creation. It’s s so simple that most people can hardly believe it. The American economist John Kenneth Galbraith (1908- 2006) once famously wrote:

“The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled. With something so important, a deeper mystery seems only decent.” 

In my opinion we can’t solve the economic crisis without understanding the proces of money creation. Every citizen of a democracy should be able to answer the question “Where does money come from?” If you don’t know the answer, watch this video.