Money: A Zero Sum Game  (Hardcover, "Krishnamurthy Vaidyanathan, Krishnamurthy V. Subramanian ")

Money, an indispensable part of our lives, determines our economic well-being. In any economy, money is an asset to “we the people” who own it and is a liability for the institutions that owe it. While establishing that money, thus, is a zero-sum game – there are no winners in this game without losers – the book explains how the money game is played. Understanding this zero-sum game is crucial as each one of us is a participant in this game. Even Nobel economists – as recent as in 2022 – have confined the primary role of banks to financial intermediation. In contrast, we posit banks primarily to be significant money creators in an economy, using a novel framework that we introduce in the form of a fundamental equation, the Vaidya–Subbu equation. Using this framework, the book not only dispels a widely perpetuated myth that only the central bank can create and control money but also establishes that it is, in fact, the banking sector that creates and controls money in most economies, including India. The book argues that the banking sector is more central to the macroeconomy than perhaps even the central bank, thus entrusting it to be a key contributor in catalysing economic growth.