English
Adrian Vasilescu exaggerates when he claims that "A world without banks is a world without money, and without money there is no economy", like he said on Sunday, on the show of Emil Hurezeanu on TV DIGI 24, because such a statement ignores the historic reality as well as the logic of the existence of money and of the banks.
Sure, money and banks are tightly connected, but the relationship between them is precisely the other way around, rather then the way Adrian Vasilescu describes it: world without banks is not necessarily a world without money, quite the contrary, without money there are no banks.
If we were to study, in this relationship, which came first, "the chicken or the egg?", then we get a clear-cut answer: "the egg".
In other words, money came first.
Because banks were only created to store money.
Take the money away from a bank and it will disappear (unless, of course, the government starts filling it up with money stolen from the population).
If all the banks in the world disappeared, it doesn't mean in the slightest that money would disappear as well.
Sure, id that happened, the money issued by banks through lending (which gets issued on top of the money created by the central banks), and which has caused the current sovereign debt crisis, would disappear, but, once the painful shock of the financial apocalypse caused by the elimination of the banking system wore off, the crisis would be solved.
Riddle me this: who owes who?!
Interest?
Forget it!
In the dictionary, a "bank" is defined as "A financial institution whose main activity is attracting deposits and borrowing funds in order to grant loans and make investments", but this is a definition that matches the more recent manner of operation of the banks, instead of the original one; in the beginning, banks were just keepers of the money, initially providing services of safeguarding it for the depositors and giving it back to them upon request, which is the invariable core of the definition.
The fact that the notion of "money" is independent from the notion of "bank", is demonstrated by the definition of money as "a means of exchange": money is any clearly identifiable object which has a generally accepted value which can be used as payment for goods and services.
Where does the notion of "bank" appear (or where is the slightest mention of it), in the definition of the notion of "money"?
Nowhere!
Therefore, we can relax, things aren't like Adrian Vasilescu says they are, banks could very well fail and disappear, but that won't affect money in any way.
In fact, we can actually relax about the disappearance of money, because, unlike what Adrian Vasilescu claims, the economy has nothing to do with money and would survive without it just fine.
The dictionary definition for the notion of "economy" is "the entirety of human activities of production, distribution and consumption of goods and services".
Do you see any mention of "money" in there?
No.
Money facilitates distribution, but it is not a sine qua non requirement.
Therefore, the statements of Adrian Vasilescu are intended to frighten us, making us think that if banks disappeared, then we would die of hunger, thirst, cold, heat and from the envy of those that date hot chicks.
Or maybe Adrian Vasilescu was being sarcastic.
Or maybe he was just speaking in aphorisms, but if that was the case, the show should have come with a warning - "This show is restricted for people younger than fifty".
Relax, he wasn't talking seriously.
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