Excerpt from National Geographic,Volume 183, No. 1, January, 1993:

But where did the Fed [Federal Reserve Bank] get that hundred million dollars?

     "We created it," a Fed official tells me.  He means that any time the central bank [the Federal Reserve] writes a check, so to speak, it creates money.  "It's money that didn't exist before," he says.

     Is there any limit on that?

     "No limit.  Only the good judgment and the conscience of the Federal Reserve people."