Back when the FED started (1913), loans were supposed to be paid back. You sit across from the banker with the valueless loan paperwork. You sign it, thereby giving it value in the amount of the money he is loaning to you. He takes it, deposits it into an account, and gives you your greenbacks; the bank ledger shows this. All you did was prepay your loan with the paperwork. At the end of the term of the loan, he was supposed to give you all your created money back. But the banks didn't do this --- Flash forward to the present. The banks are required to finally "print" all that money that they received from all those prepaid loans that were paid off anyway. That's where all the money is coming from, including the literal loans the banks made on the value of those loans that they kept locked away in their ledgers. If the people caught on - their parents, grands, and great-grands, etc., died over this, and lost all kinds of property from foreclosures all the way back.