Sunday, November 4, 2012

M2 Money Suppy Clearing House System

This is a a work in progress entry.

This is a place holder entry for the question:  Exactly which clearing house system does the clearing house function for all monetary transactions of the M2 (Digital Segment) of the M2 Money supply?

Seems like the answer should be simple.

The following up question is how do the clearing houses that have systems that do money clearing functions for the funny money, near money financial paper beyond the M2 money supply relate to the system that that is the clearing house system for the M2 money supply?

In the end, settlements of transactions for whatever is traded must be....(what word applies here?  Translated?  Resolved?)  in the ultimate medium of exchange.  The US dollar.

How does that all work in the clearing house systems?

A step to discovering the answer  appears to be Fedwire at the wholesale level.  

The Federal Reserve Bank Fedwire system is a wholesale level clearing house system for money/near money exchanges among its more than 9,500 members.
"The Clearing House Payments Company"  (trademark: "The Clearing House") says this about itself here:

The Clearing House Payments Company provides payment, clearing, and settlement services to its member banks and other financial institutions, clearing almost $2 trillion daily and representing nearly half of the automated-clearing-house, funds-transfer, and check-image payments made in the U.S.  

The Clearing House lists 18 member banks (also owners) but they are big banks and this is super big wholesale level.

My conclusion opinion: The total digital M2 money supply (10 trillion dollars) exists in total among all the savings deposits in our commercial banks, more than 9,500 of them for which Fedwire is the wholesale level clearing system among all the member banks.

At the retail level, banks have a system to clear payments between their own bank customers.  Retail level banks may choose among a variety of banking software suppliers for the systems to perform their integrated bank functions, one of those and probably a relatively minor one, is clearing transactions internally among same bank members or sending the clearing requirments to a wholesale level system when clearing is required among banks.

The top 40 retail bank software systems providers are list here in order of size rank.

The answer to the question of what clearing house system does the M2 money supply clearing function is that it is done by a network of systems.  At the retail level, it is what ever system is chosen by and bank to do its banking business including internal and external transaction clearing.  That specific task itself is probably a relatively small and simple module of the entire system???  Nevertheless a central one.

Oracle is the biggest provider of retail banking system software described here.

I think it is obvious that all of the multitude of retail level banking software systems deal generically with the processing logic of simple clearing functions that simply require moving M2 digital money, our medium of exchange from one account to another.  Moved either internally or passed up to a wholesale level clearing system for clearing at the national level or international level.

The answer to the question is: A complex integrated system network operating at my levels performs the clearing house function for the M2 Money Supply.
 









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