If you ask a person in the street ‘how is money created?’ they will probably look at you blankly. A couple might hazard a guess and say the Bank of England. There’s a Chinese proverb that says: ‘The fish is the last to know water.’ Money is all around us, playing a role in almost everything we do, yet it can be difficult to understand. We are swimming in a society that depends on money—that’s become obsessed with money—but few of us know where it comes from or how it actually works. A landmark paper[1] released by the Bank of England in March 2014 explains how private banks create the vast majority of money we use when they make loans. …