"A lot of people in America think there is a vault -- and banks take the money you deposit then hold it for you until you want it back and then they give it back to you," Bush said later in a speech at the University of West Virginia at Parkersburg. "But that's not the way it works. There is no money in the vault, just IOUs that I saw firsthand."
While President Bush's remarks were not entirely correct -- there is in fact some money in the vaults of banks -- it is true that most of the deposits have in fact been spent or loaned to other people. While most people imagine that their savings account contains real money, it is in fact just an IOU.