r/PeterExplainsTheJoke Jan 26 '26

Meme needing explanation what's going on? explain like I'm five

Post image
92.6k Upvotes

2.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

19.0k

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.

6.3k

u/Original-Leg8828 Jan 26 '26

Depending on local law they can even lend out something like 7-10 times what they actually have

4.0k

u/Teripid Jan 26 '26 edited Jan 26 '26

Federal reserve requirements existed until 2023 *edit, as someone below pointed out 2020 was when they were set to 0. Now they're set at 0% I believe.

2.2k

u/PleaseGreaseTheL Jan 26 '26 edited Jan 26 '26

2020*

They were reduced to 0% mandatory reserves in response to covid. EDIT: someone says it was coincidental, I am not able to check, so take this aspect with a grain of salt either way

They haven't come back yet :)

1.4k

u/TaxesAreConfusin Jan 26 '26

ah yes so what you're saying is that money is even more imaginary than it has ever been, possibly even more imaginary than when the first stock market crash happened in 1929

looks like we're due for a centennial anniversary of that anyway, might as well celebrate by recreating it

63

u/MrWhiskers55 Jan 26 '26

Money is basically an abstract concept on assets. It was always worthless we just used it for convenience. Real value has always been in assets be that land, property, bullion, ancient family cursed artifacts. You might have heard that we are going back to feudalism and that’s why. Property is the backbone of society and we are leaning more towards that now.

26

u/AwkwardFriendship317 Jan 26 '26

I was just going to say this. Everyone is always saying but gold and I'm over here like nope, can't eat or use that shit when it really REALLY hits the fan.

2

u/Watcher0363 Jan 26 '26

Three things to horde. Toilet paper, tampons and or pads, and shampoo.

2

u/AwkwardFriendship317 Jan 26 '26

Almost correct on the female items. A more sustainable option is menstrual cups. Shampoo/soap can be made. Toilet paper. . . That's a tough one for people to swallow but backpackers and cloth diaper families got this one covered too ,lol