Actually, I believe you are referring to the "Money Multiplier". This is a function of FED policy which the US banking system is partially based upon. When I put $100 into the bank as savings, the bank has to honor one of the tools of the FED called the "Reserve Requirement Ratio". The RRR is a requirement that the bank keep in reserves a percentage of my deposit in available cash and allows them to loan out the rest. So if, for instance, the RRR is 10%, the bank will keep $10 in cash reserves and loan out $90. This keeps happening (up to a point) "creating money" that did not exist before. BTW - the pea in the shell game is here. The "Money Multiplier" ends up being the inverse of the RRR, or in our example, 10. That means that for the initial $100 deposit that I make, $1000 can be loaned out as the money travels on the balance sheets from bank to bank. Two things are required for this FED tool to work. One - you MUST have a nation which SAVES money. The United States is banking on the savings of the Baby Boomers. We need some new thrifty savers. And two, we ASSUME that the banks will loan out any excess reserves. If they are scared to make loans, new money is not "created".
So, do the world a favor - get out of credit card debt, save for a while, then borrow some money to spend...