people have cottoned on to the fact that their banks use computers now? " No, anon, I don't, if only judging from the kerfuffle arising in comments about the claim that "it's just marking up spreadsheets." But in talking to people, if find that a lot of people don't actually get this. They think that their money is somehow "in the bank" and that the government is actually "running out of money" when the president says so. Many people don't have clue as to how the monetary system works. They think of money as cash and not as numbers on a spreadsheet. These people think that when government spends it does so by "printing more money." They also think that the cash has to be there somewhere "behind the numbers" in their banks account. After all, they can walk in and demand cash. That's why the analogies are so powerful politically. Then there this the group that knows about reserve banking. They think that banks lend by creating money as a multiple of reserves. They think that therefore, there is "no money there in the bank" behind it. These are the same people that think the government prints notes without banking so it really isn't money at all. These two groups comprise most people in the country, I would estimate. Very, very few people actually know how the present system works, even many "sophisticated" people. Just ask some people, and you'll be amazed at the answers people come up with.