Sunday, October 20, 2013

Is China P2P Lending Really Shadow Banking?

This is interesting:
P2P Companies: The Movers and Shakers of China’s Shadow Banking

Shadow Banking? No way!

The bank system in China operates on a fractional reserve model.  The reserve requirement is relatively high.  Banks loan just like the US banks by creating debt money out of nothing with an numerical entry in an on hand balance data element in a customer account.  Poof! Money from nothing.  Ahhh....but not for nothing, pay me interest.

P2P loans money already in existence, at least that is the way I see it working.  Can't imagine that anyone other than a chartered bank can make money materialize out of nothing by writing down a number and handing to to someone as a loan.

Non-bank entities with money loan it out.  They might just have a lot of money made from some income enterprise.  They may have borrowed it from a bank?  Maybe not.

The money that P2P lends is debt money already created by a bank and thereby put into the money supply (along with public money cummulative deficit spending called total government debt above taxes by the government for which the government is indebted to the bank).  P2P uses "limbo" money that exists as a representation of debt in the macro gross analysis time frame from when it was born from nothing by virtue of a bank loan and when it dies and returns to nothing by virtue of paying back the loan.  

P2P just reloans the money while it is in its transitory limbo life time.  When it is paid back to the P2P lender it still exists and will continue to exist to be re-loaned again, unless it is used by the P2P lender to pay a bank back for a loan that it gave them.  Then it goes Poof and is extinguished out of existence.

P2P is not at all a Shadow Bank nor does it do a Shadow Banking function.  That is absolutely incorrect.  That it is done through a risk assessment third party is a cool idea.  It is operating like real money would operate in a debt free money system where a loan is just one of the millions of things anyone can do with their money, not the thing that creates the money to do it with.  It only provides money created initially free of debt.

Shadow Banking is internal to a bank where a bank does things that either are or border on fraud.  Like off balance sheet and marking to make believe rather than an honest market value.  Some statements and framing of Shadow Banking as described by Wikipedia should be reviewed and revised in my opinion.

P2P lending is not Shadow Banking, it is a competitive alternative to banks.  One that should be supported under free market rules and maybe some appropriate rules. 

If P2P starts loaning money that it creates as their own private "money from nothing" system then that is a different story.  Not a good selling point for their loans of money they can create however.........but hey, we have been suckered by the banks so...... 

P2P may deal with a middle entity that brings borrowers and lenders together and that entity by this definition at Wikipedia is a shadow banking entity.  But I see it more a broker.  

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