Cash Reserves of Banks

I went to my bank to get some money the other day. I needed $4000. They told me that officially I needed to give 24 hours notice for cash withdrawl over $2,000 however they had enough today so they could give me my $4000. Now my bank is probably a bit smaller than a big bank like ANZ but I found this quite startling. It got me wondering about how much money banks have in reserve.

A note about Reserve banking . Banks don't need $100 dollars to lend you $100. The US has a requirement that the banks have at least own equity worth 10% of the total loans outstanding. So if Citibank only actually owned $10 then the sum of all the loans they could make could not exceed $100.

So I did a little investigation and what I found (with a quick look on wikipedia) startled me somewhat. I knew that the US had a 10% requirement. I didn't know though that the UK and Australia does not require any reserve whatsoever. So they can make money loaning money they don't have. I wish I could do that! Below is taken from wikipedia

Country	Required reserve (in %)	Note
Australia	None	Statutory Reserve Deposits abolished in 1988, replaced with 1% Non-callable Deposits[5]
Canada	None
Mexico	None
New Zealand	None	1999 [2]
Sweden	None
United Kingdom	None
Czech Republic	2.00	Since 7 October 2009
Eurozone	2.00	Since 1999[6]
South Africa	2.50
Switzerland	2.50
Poland	3.00
Chile	4.50
India	6.00	as per RBI.
Bangladesh	5.50	Raised from 5.00. Effective from 15 May 2010
Lithuania	6.00
Pakistan	5.00	Since 1 November 2008
Taiwan	7.00	[7]
Latvia	8.00
Jordan	8.00
Malawi	15.00
Zambia	8.00
Burundi	8.50
Hungary	2.0
Ghana	9.00
United States	10.00 If anyone believes there is something incorrect or misleading with this article then please add to the comments below or send me an email