High-powered money is money that is valid for the settlement of taxes and central bank clearing. Unlike low-powered money, which is valid for the settlement of private debts.

High-powered money is created ex nihilo when the sovereign spends, and destroyed when the sovereign taxes.

Various sorts of low-powered money is created by various sorts of private lending.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

Wikipedia: the monetary base

(also base money, money base, high-powered money, reserve money, or, in the UK, narrow money) is a term relating to (but not being equivalent to) the money supply (or money stock), the amount of money in the economy. The monetary base is highly liquid money that consists of coins, paper money (both as bank vault cash and as currency circulating in the public), and commercial banks' reserves with the central bank.

Economics is politics by other means