I’m talking about commercial banks themselves being in the process of creating money, which in the UK was indeed not an established fact until the 2000s. I’m on my phone but I remember reading about that in an Economist issue a few years ago, I’ll try to find it once I get in front of a computer.
Later edit: Found an Economist review [1] of this article/book itself, which I think it’s not what I had in mind but close enough:
> This often-cited short paper lucidly explains how commercial banks create money and central banks influence that process. It dispels many common misconceptions about money. For instance, most introductory economic textbooks say that commercial banks lend out the money that savers deposit in them. In fact banks can lend money and create corresponding deposits even without savings flowing in–in other words, banks are quite literally creating “new money” when they make a loan and a corresponding deposit.
Most probably you were thinking about Central Bank money creation, or, if not, those introductory economy courses seem to have not had any effect on the educated masses, hence why The Economist still has to re-iterate to its educated readers how money creation works.
[1] https://archive.ph/7yXme
Later edit: Found an Economist review [1] of this article/book itself, which I think it’s not what I had in mind but close enough:
> This often-cited short paper lucidly explains how commercial banks create money and central banks influence that process. It dispels many common misconceptions about money. For instance, most introductory economic textbooks say that commercial banks lend out the money that savers deposit in them. In fact banks can lend money and create corresponding deposits even without savings flowing in–in other words, banks are quite literally creating “new money” when they make a loan and a corresponding deposit.
Most probably you were thinking about Central Bank money creation, or, if not, those introductory economy courses seem to have not had any effect on the educated masses, hence why The Economist still has to re-iterate to its educated readers how money creation works.
[1] https://archive.ph/7yXme