Yes. Though as a small nitpick, I wouldn't describe capital requirements as 'assets you need to keep on hand'.
No matter your capital structure, all your liabilities will be matched by assets. What matters is that after your accounting for your fixed liabilities, like deposits, you still have plenty of total assets left over to have a thick equity cushion to absorb losses.
In accounting terms, equity is also a liability. But it's a very benign one, as your shareholders can't demand their money back.
There are other forms of liabilities that act like equity in their ability to absorb losses. But equity is the simplest and generally the most import one.
Accounting might sound rather boring, but at its core its about understanding businesses (and economies) with numbers. It can be as varied and interesting as companies are.
Of course, in practice there's lots of cruft build on top of relatively simple concepts. But the simple underlying concepts are still fascinating. The link above explains double entry book keeping in terms of graph theory and network flows.
The basics of deprecation are also quite interesting (to me, at least).
To me, accountants have a better grip on reality than economists. It's an accountant who taught me real economics (I was originally pursuing a math degree with economy as a 'minor' (not really how it's working in my country but close enough)). I had to unlearn some of what I learned in my first year, but I had a way better grip on how money work after that (and decided to create value and changed course).
Yes. Well, carpenters have an even better grip on reality.
Accountants and economists are doing different things. Both fields are useful, and there's some small overlap between the two.
Many people could benefit from learning some 'rationalised' accounting, ie accounting without the accumulated historical accidents and tax dodges. (Those are also interesting. But less as a description of a reality, and more in the same vein that the Talmud is interesting.)
But orthodox economic theory goes against most thing i learned. To be honest, i really thought it didn't matter, that macroeconomics was on its own, and that economists are valid expert to listen to. We were still in eurozone crisis, and while i thought "This plan doesn't make much sense" when the Troika laid out what Greece should do, GDP and socioeconomic markers were not stuff i learned or cared about.
And then like 5 years ago, i learn about MMT, read about it, disagree on some points, but it overall make much, much more sense and si way closer to reality than Friedman theories to me. It seems like macroeconomics do follow the stuff i learned when i wanted to become a quantitative analyst or whatever (i only wanted to do math tbh, and didn't follow finance classes that much).
And then during Covid we have all those "expert" economists who start to talk everywhere. But now, i am sure they are talking out of their own asses. They had now idea of what production is. The simple idea that production is linked with energy is novel for them. They probably are useful, like sociologists are useful, but i'd like to hear them on medias as much as i hear sociologists. Or even less, since i do think sociologists have real-world application to their thesis, for harm reduction during stampede. Let's say as much as medievalists historians.
The experts are the ones who engineered decades of low interest rates so their buddies can get cheap loans and play financial games with the economy. They've never been trustworthy.
No matter your capital structure, all your liabilities will be matched by assets. What matters is that after your accounting for your fixed liabilities, like deposits, you still have plenty of total assets left over to have a thick equity cushion to absorb losses.
In accounting terms, equity is also a liability. But it's a very benign one, as your shareholders can't demand their money back.
There are other forms of liabilities that act like equity in their ability to absorb losses. But equity is the simplest and generally the most import one.