the.com/banking
The art of lending out money you swore was just sitting there waiting.
means The business of taking in deposits, lending money, and handling financial transactions, typically as a regulated institution.
from From "bank," which traces back through Italian "banca" or "banco" — a bench or counter. In medieval Italian trading cities, money changers literally worked at benches in the marketplace, weighing and swapping coins for merchants. The same root gives us "bankrupt": from Italian "banca rotta," a "broken bench," supposedly the fate of a moneylender whose bench was smashed when he could no longer pay his debts.
- reserve trick
- Banks keep a fraction; the rest is loaned again.
- ancient roots
- Temples held deposits 4,000 years ago in Babylon.
- the bench
- Name comes from Italian banco, a money-changer's bench.
- money made
- Most money exists only as digits, never printed.
- too big
- Some banks are deemed too large to fail.
hsbc — british multinational bank with $2.9 trillion in assets as of 2023
jp morgan chase — largest us bank by assets, $3.7 trillion as of 2024
deutsche bank — german multinational bank, europe's largest by revenue
icbc — industrial and commercial bank of china, world's largest bank by total assets