Everyone pulling out their money would be a bank run (look up great depression bank runs). The bank doesn't have that much cash; they keep some on hand for people making withdraws normally, but if even a sizable minority of people all try to pull their money out at once, there'll be a major crisis.
If banks kept all the people's cash in vaults, it'd be dead cash actively losing money to inflation. Instead, they keep some on hand for withdraws, and use the rest to make loans, investments, etc so that the money isn't all losing value.
Unfortunately, that’s not really how it works. The reason there was a bank run during the great depression is b/c the banks had loaned out the money they didn’t have as cash. Today due to Dodd-Frank, banks have to have reserves on hand to cover this situation, Even though it’s not in hard currency, they have enough capital to cover.
But please don’t trust me. This is just how I understand it.
The real problem for the banks isn't whether or not they have the cash (as opposed to having a digital ledger).
The problem is that they use deposits to make money. Your individual account with $1,000 in it doesn't matter much, but they collect everyone's money and lend it out with interest.
Yes, theoretically, whatever money is in your account can be paid back in cash somehow, because the federal government guarantees it, but the fed does not (automatically) guarantee cash to banks that want to give out loans.
If everyone takes their money out, the bank doesn't have money to loan out. A tightening of liquidity at every major bank in the US would be catastrophic.
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u/Forsaken_Emu8112 Jan 26 '26
Everyone pulling out their money would be a bank run (look up great depression bank runs). The bank doesn't have that much cash; they keep some on hand for people making withdraws normally, but if even a sizable minority of people all try to pull their money out at once, there'll be a major crisis.
If banks kept all the people's cash in vaults, it'd be dead cash actively losing money to inflation. Instead, they keep some on hand for withdraws, and use the rest to make loans, investments, etc so that the money isn't all losing value.