michael west still $65 in front, page-13

sI74 - do you mean if I withdraw my deposit? Obviously the big banks deposits are made up of hundreds of thousands of customers some withdrawing money others depositing money. They are able to lend out at a higher ratio for long term deposits than they are for say people's savings (spendings) accounts. I believe for the safer long term deposits (if I put my money in a 2 year term deposit for example) they can lend up to 25x on that money (someone else here may know for sure if that is the ratio?). For peoples savings accounts the ratio would probably be a lot less (I'm just guessing but maybe 5x).

So just say cba has $2billion in deposits that don't mature for > 12 mths. This would be a constantly changing target, so they should leave themselves some breathing space and may lend out at a rate of 20x rather than 25x, in case the deposit base decreases.

Is that what you were getting at - not sure if I answered your question? If everybody were to withdraw their deposits the bank would go bankrupt as they would well and truly breach their liquidity ratios. It's happened a few times throughout history and is called a run on the bank.