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@ smug
2025-02-28 18:32:33
I was talking about the literal printing of money. Borrowing money (aka debt) doesn't create more money. I take a 1k loan and gain 1k, the bank "loses" 1k from their books (but gets my loan on its books in return). You can argue that the scam comes in when you tell the deposit owners that they still have their money. Overall, for little amount of withdrawals, they still do.
Fractional reserve just means that banks don't need to have the money they have on the books in a literal safe somewhere. This works on a trust system, similarly to the credit score analogy I used earlier. There is no difference between me giving a loan to Bob or me dumping my money into a bank and the bank giving a loan to Bob. The bank doesn't create money. Even using the term "money" is a bit iffy here already. Now if there is a bank run, any bank is fucked. However, you don't bank run a bank you think will exist tomorrow (aka can pay when you need it, aka pay back their debt to you). That's part of the system. It works both ways btw. Do you still have all the money you took out from a loan?
Not if the money isn't in circulation. If I print $1m but put it under a matress it doesn't do anything.
Debt over GDP doesn't matter either. Now here you get a fun part where part of the debt is owned by yourself so it isn't actually real. Or you print actual money to buy back bonds.
Similarly to how a bank would crash if everyone collected their debt, the same thing applies to government debt. You are happy with the interest rates (which is generally the main problem of a country going broke btw). The US is a stable country which will never collapse (that's the image, anyway) so you have no reason to withdraw your money from there. So say the US government also has a 10% fractional reserve ratio, did it "print" 90% of money?
The often cited theory is that printing a lot of money generated a lot of inflation. The usual plan of action is to increase interest rates, so people borrow less and park their money in saving accounts or CDs, removing money from the rotation. However, if giving a bank money is bad because banks just multiply money which would increase the money supply, which would mean higher inflation, why does this action work?
Back to the original question: If the US government can just print money, why don't they just print the amount of debt they currently own and pay off their creditors?