Could the Weimar Hyperinflation Happen Again in America?

lol your calling me narrow minded when you cant even except what is solid fact? ok...

you have even admitted you haven't read the FEDERAL RESERVE documents proving what i have said to be fact. so go do one thanks

"Open your eyes and mind. If your can't pay your debt to the bank they'll take the roof over your head and the shirt on your back. Do they care for that little bit of legal tender crap written on some peace of paper. Of course not. The whole freaking system is a forgery."

since when did i say they wouldn't? bankruptcy is built into the system and a nescary part of the cycle, but i wont bother explaining how and why, as you will dispute it without even knowing (or bothering to learn) the truth.

your going back on ignore, im done trying to help retards such as yourself understand the REAL system. not the system you think you understand from reading the economist. goodbye.

Listen up NR. Your logic is extra terrestial - just read your sentence.

How is me calling you narrow minded related to accepting a solid fact.

Let me get this straight... If I accept what you believe to be a solid fact then somehow lends credibility to me calling you narrow minded. Where is the missing link??? Hellllloooooooooooooo anyone in there????

Your logic and thought process is deranged...

'Even admitted' - No. I simply just admitted it. What has the 'even' got to do with it.

You are profoundly weird. You brain works in mysterious ways...

the even is there because you are the worst kind of ignoramus. you are arguing against something THINKING you know your right, without even bothering to read the material which would infact prove you wrong. don't bother replying going on ignore

Don't be like that NR.

I'm doing boring paper work - my VAT returns and I need distraction from counting all my debt...

I'm sorry if I have offended. It was only partially intended... Honest.

Nice sarcasm. You get a point.
As to that last, as you know, the only monetary assets that aren't someone else's liability are the PMs: gold and silver.
I quoted the part about the multiplier because that's the crux of the problem.
What you're not getting is this: reserve requirements exist to be broken. Which means the answer to your first question is, they don't. They really don't.
Have you ever heard the one about how at the beginning of creation all the different parts of the body wanted to be boss, and finally the asshole won out by closing tight and staying closed until all the rest of the parts of the body gave in and let him be boss?
It's funny because we all think the brain is boss. But - and here's one you probably never thought about - which part of the body is thinking the brain is boss? The brain itself, of course.
In the same way, the Fed is recognized by everyone else as boss of the banking system, and of course the Fed thinks so too. But they would, wouldn't they?
All it does is allow reserve expansion to happen in flush times because banks - here's the important part; it's in that Keen link which you really have to read - make loans first and find the reserves later.
As Keen points out, if loans exceed the reserve limit, the Fed really has no choice but to relax policy. They're in the business of keeping credit flowing smoothly, not suddenly applying the air brakes when things start going too fast.
This exactly accords with my experience supporting the Fed Funds desk at a super-huge bank. Reserves were seen merely as a bureaucratic rubber stamp that had to be fig-leafed somehow. You had to report once every two weeks, on what was and is still known as Fed Wednesday. If your reserves were too low, you went out and got them somehow in the interbank market. If they were too high - that is, greater than your reserve requirement - you lent them out to some other bank who needed them. Since reserves are just a percentage of deposits, and since if you loan someone money at bank a, it becomes a deposit at bank b, the reserve requirement means exactly nothing. Games got played by the Fed Funds traders on Fed Wednesday, games that everyone enjoyed but that everyone knew meant zip to the actual everyday functioning of the bank. Once Fed Wednesday was over, no one gave a hoot what the reserves were. As it came close, the traders would see what the position of the bank was, and start to either buy or sell money so that the proper number got reported.
I did this for a long long time, and I can tell you categorically that the bank never turned down a loan just because making it would screw up the reserve position.
The Fed is powerless. The reserve requirement is their strongest tool for restraining or expanding credit, and to the big banks, it means zilch. They're way too sophisticated to allow a little thing like a Fed reserve requirement get in the way of making money. Quite literally making money.
Which, finally, means that multiplier you learned about in school, and that the Chicago Fed makes such a big deal about in that pdf, is a fairy tale. Doesn't exist. Or rather, it does, but only now, in bad times, because as loan demand dries up and other loans are defaulted on, debt goes up in smoke and money disappears. The multiplier exists, but it exists only in bad times. In good times, it's a joke.
I understood instantly what Keen was talking about because it fit so perfectly what I saw in the Fed Funds department. But even if you've never worked there, he presents some strong evidence that the reserve requirement means nothing, because he shows that credit expansion comes before money supply goes up. First loans are made, and then money supply goes up, not vice versa, as would be the case if the Fed's open market operations, for instance, meant anything to the money market.
So, that's the long and complicated answer. The short answer is in those 10 points.
BTW, saying no to Lehman was done because, you have to remember, Lehman wasn't part of the Federal Reserve System. Legally there was quite literally nothing the Fed could do, other than facilitate its sale to a third party, as they did with Bear. When no buyer was willing to take it, the game was over.
If anything, that was a further illustration of their powerlessness: not only can't they restrain the banks within their system, they can't do anything at all about credit providers like Lehman who exist entirely outside the Federal Reserve system. And in the recently demised boom, that amounted to a lot more than just the pawn shop down the block: there was Lehman, Merrill, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and a numberless host of small-time mortgage originators all over the US, all of them providing credit entirely without reference to the Fed's reserve requirement.
Which makes that multiplier even more irrelevant, once again, except in bad times, and in bad times it exists despite the Fed, not because of it, as we are now seeing.

In summary the crux and origins of the meltdown have been pretty well documented as taking on excessive risk lending to people who couldn't afford them in the first place.
Repackaging and relabelling of financial instruments and then re-classifying them was another factor.

However, we are now moving away from the terms of money and how the money supply is controlled. From what you are saying it seems it is pretty much a wild wild west thing in the US and all financial instititutions are lawless cowboys and the Fed coupled with the White House are pretty much a non-entity. This is not my understanding and your opening sentence holds the key...

Reserve requirements need to be enforced and financial markets need to be regulated.

Self regulation obviously does not work.