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Re:Some young people are buying houses with friends by vonmoltke on Wednesday March 06, 2019 @12:18PM (#19320649)
> The whole point of fractional reserve banking is a $100K house being held represents a modest return during a housing bubble, but they could turn that $100K property into $1M of mortgages with a likely higher total return.

That is a significant misunderstanding of fractional reserve banking. Banks can only lend money they have, i.e. that customers have deposited. They can't just invent money to lend. So, a bank with $100,000 in cash can only make loans totaling $90,000 with it (assuming a 10% reserve requirement).

Re:Some young people are buying houses with friends by mattgibson on Wednesday March 06, 2019 @02:27PM (#19321827)
This appears to no longer be true: http://gregpytel.blogspot.com/2009/04/largest-heist-in-histo...

By financialising the mortgages and other loans, the banks can now treat them as if they were lendable cash. A bit like they can treat gold bullion like cash.