Brian Romanchuk — Primer: What Limits Bank Lending?

The unfortunate fact that bank deposits are considered money has one side effect: our mysticism about money extends towards banking. The apparent ability of banks to "create money out of thin air" seems unfair, and this leads to questions about what limits their ability to lend. The answer is a lot simpler than one might suspect. For any other business (with the possible exception of the resource industry), output is largely constrained by their ability to find customers that they can sell their product to. The business of banks is lending. By analogy, the ability to find customers that they can profitably lend to limits their growth....

Bond Economics
Primer: What Limits Bank Lending?
Brian Romanchuk