can’t they just print the money? i don’t get why debt is a problem for this case
Unfortunately this is about the federal government’s “debt,” which is a red herring, and not the country’s international balance of payments deficit.
It’s true that they can just print money here, but this leads to secondary effects that the article touches on. Specifically, increased currency volume tends to mean devaluation leading to private lenders to tighten up.
If they print enough of it without shredding any through taxation, yes, but I think this is commonly overblown so Congress can claim they can’t pay for stuff, except of course for military stuff. This article was timed for Congress to make spending decisions; they come out every cycle. Congressional leaders announce an agreement on spending levels, a key step to averting shutdown
Right, as far as public spending goes there isn’t really a problem. They can print to an infinite amount because the debt is in their own currency, and as long as you print the currency, you can print however much you want. There’s never going to be a default because the fed can just create more credit. The government can always pay its debt by simply printing the money.
The problem for the US economy lies with private debt that is leading to a default. Creditors are tightening their lending which is leading VC funded businesses to crash. Meanwhile, individuals become increasingly unable to service their debts, we’re seeing them being forced to forfeit their property. Private banks that are holding debt also end up with bad debt as a result. This sort of dynamic is precisely what we saw leading up to the 2008 crisis. We’re now seeing similar things happening, but on a much bigger scale.
yea also, U.S. is like the only country which doesn’t need to worry about balance of payments. You see this with how every other country’s current account deficit is shown in U.S. Dollars instead of the local currency.
of course, there are very good reasons to not have a current account deficit. self reliance and all (plus the dollar slowly losing its status)
The last President with a balanced budget was Clinton. If Republicans cared about a balanced budget so much, why aren’t they asking him how he did it?
100% tax on any amount greater than $999,999,999 and also tax the churches.