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Although a growing money supply is needed to lower the risk of system crashes by failing loans, the multiplier factor ends up causing more and more instability in the money supply and causing smaller cash reserves. As soon as a bank has to book a loss, this not only decreases its capital, but often also its cash reserve. When a bank has less than the 8% required capital (compared to the outstanding loans), or too little cash reserve left, then, according to the rules, the bank has lost the game. The subprime mortgages caused the system to get stuck in 2007, but, in fact, any somewhat bigger losses, like for instance on Third World loans, could have triggered the crisis. The banks simply had too few reserves left to take losses. And once one bank gets in trouble, it can easily spread to other banks, because banks borrow money and buy securities from each other to optimize their balance sheets. The fact that the subprime mortgages were wrapped up as a complex financial product only made the effect bigger. But the main cause of the crisis is not the loss on the subprime mortgages, but the structurally decreased capacity of banks to take losses. And that is the consequence of the natural dynamic within the "fractional reserve banking" system.
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