A number written on an account can buy assets, pay salaries, and finance a business. This everyday reality contains a political question: who has the power to turn a recording into money recognized by others? Interrogating money means entering into the relationships between credit, trust, institutions and the possibility of deciding one's future.
The discussion becomes particularly delicate when from the description of banking creation we move on to the thesis that each citizen could independently produce scriptural euros to pay off a debt. Understanding this proposal requires following the reasoning to its decisive point, keeping distinct the functioning of the balance sheets and the effects recognised at a payment.
The money that is born with a loan
The European Central Bank explains that much of the money people use is bank money. When a bank grants a loan, it can create the corresponding deposit by expanding its balance sheet. With the repayment of the loan, the money thus created is destroyed. The institutional description therefore acknowledges that deposits are not derived solely from banknotes previously paid by another customer. ECB, What is currency?.
Consider a simplified example: a loan of one thousand euros produces for the bank a credit to the customer and a deposit available to the customer. The registration of the deposit also involves a bank obligation. The Bank of England specifies that deposits represent what the bank owes its depositors and are therefore its liability. For this reason the creation of a deposit does not amount, alone, to accounting for the whole amount as a profit. Money creation in the modern economy.
The power to create credit, however, remains relevant. From a political perspective we can ask ourselves what activities it supports, what territories it reaches and what needs it neglects. The existence of an authorized mechanism does not subtract that mechanism from public discussion. Instead, it makes it more important to understand its rules.
The thesis of the self-produced bank transfer
The proposal of the autonomously created scriptural euros claims that a person can register in their accounts the creation of a sum equal to the debt, write down its payment and communicate the transaction to the creditor. The document is presented as payment, sometimes under the denomination of Scriptural transfer. Its premise is a symmetry claim: if a writing can create bank money, why should a similar faculty be denied to the individual?
This is where the passage to examine is. A registration may document a will, a statement or a proposal, but its effectiveness towards other subjects also depends on the framework that recognizes it. The word bank transfer, imprinted on a form, does not by itself prove that a transfer has taken place through a payment service provider.
The Bank of Italy expressly describes these initiatives and states that self-creation is not permitted by law. Recalls, for bank money, both the convertibility into legal money and the issuance through authorized and supervised operators. Bank of Italy, explanation of the phenomenon.
On the practical result, the indication is clear: the payment with presumed euro scriptural does not extinguish the debt; the creditor can continue the protective actions provided for by the system. This is the legal framework set out by the authority, distinct from the political aspiration that animates the proposal. An autonomous declaration of payment should therefore not be taken as proof of release from an obligation. Bank of Italy, effects and risks.
The question of sovereignty remains open
Clarifying this limit makes it possible to formulate the original question better. What collective participation should exist in monetary decisions? How to make credit accessible without fostering dependency and concentration? What space can we give to forms of exchange based on cooperation, social utility and mutual responsibility?
The subject of property also requires precision. The capital of the ECB is subscribed by the national central banks of the European Union, according to a key linked to population and gross domestic product. This figure does not coincide with the generic claim that the entire European system belongs directly to commercial banks. ECB, capital underwriting.
The quest for economic autonomy can start from a demanding demand: make the powers that organize money understandable and discuss how to orient them. The more radical the question, the more demonstrable passages matter. A critique of money gains strength when it distinguishes what it describes, what it wishes to transform, and the effects that an act really produces.
