A quick point about monetary theory and banking.
Monetary economics has a basic result: nobody wants to hold non-interest bearing fiat money over time unless the price level is falling, so that the value of money is increasing over time. Many, if not most, theoretic discussions of money are premised on the assumption that fiat money is an object and that therefore one can hold no money or positive quantities of money, but one can’t hold a short position in fiat money.
Maybe this is one of macroeconomics greatest errors. Perhaps the whole point of the banking system is to allow the economy as whole to hold a short position in fiat money. After all, from the perspective of a bank what is a bank deposit if not a naked short position in cash? And by lending to businesses and consumers banks allow the rest of us to be short cash, too. This makes sense, because the basic principles of intertemporal economic efficiency state that we should all be short cash.
Synthetic Assets 