The Truth about Money Printing. Do you want to understand?

After reading the above what do you believe:

  • Interest rates will go up.

    Votes: 7 21.9%
  • The Fed can just keep buying treasuries to infinity

    Votes: 17 53.1%
  • Modern Monetary Theory will fix the problem

    Votes: 2 6.3%
  • The US will default.

    Votes: 11 34.4%

  • Total voters
    32
@Lovey80, groan. There have been plenty of other posts rebutting each of the points you made in this thread and many other threads. I won't go into them again because I'm simply repeating myself to people who can't accept that balancing budgets in these modern times is generally a non-issue for most modern Western nations who still have monetary sovereignty and credibility across the global financial sector (which obviously doesn't include you).
I have no doubt that you have said it many times before but when you have said it in this thread I have not understood... and I am genuinely trying to. Your statement that balancing budgets in these times is generally a non-issue for most modern nations who have monetary Sovereignty and credibility is completely reasonable. But you’re saying a lot more than this I think. You are saying that the level of money printing that is going on in the USA (I don’t include Australia) is not a problem. This level of printing and lending to the government means deficits will be orders of magnitude more than any deficit that has been seen before. It’s not simply an unbalanced budget which I agree is no problem. I’m actually surprised that you call it a deficit because I understood you did not regard the government debt as debt. Also you don’t believe the USA trading partners will be concerned. None of us are going to change the world but I’d love to understand your view. You have said you are an Austrian Economist, my favourite type.
 
^^^ that would make it a short discussion. (-:

the Japanese are savers.
they are not running the same trade imbalance that the US is.

I reckon these two factors are protecting them but Japan is certainly a factor in your favour.
 
the Japanese are savers.

Thanks to the Japanese government high level of spending, there is a lot of savings to be had by the Japanese people/ private sector. :)

Whereas Australian government has relative low spending, therefore the people/private sector has low savings.
 
Last edited:
There is nothing wrong with a trade imbalance, it just means the people of the US are more prosperous than whoever they trade with.

it just means their currency remains in high demand. A continuous Trade deficit can’t go on for ever without reserve status and not have serious negative impacts.
 
Exchange rates drop further, trade deficits increase, Gov’t deficits increase. Forex reserves drop. International and local private investors become risk shy on your bonds requiring even more central bank printing. The value of the dollar drops further making USD denominated assets less valuable.
At some point large holders of USD assets (China and Japan are two), including bonds will not want a bar of them. They dump them on the market to try to realise some value before they are worthless. Everyone follows suit. US Bonds are worth nothing and so is the USD. All the USD, both physical and electronically comes flying home all at once.

edit to add. Somewhere in there the derivatives market implodes.

baddabing baddaboom It costs $1000USD for a loaf of bread.
 
International and local private investors become risk shy on your bonds requiring even more central bank printing.

That's a possible scenario. Unlikely for all the reasons mentioned previously but possible I guess if exploring every conceivable outcome is your thing then sure. It would of course require a complete loss of faith in the reason why sovereign bonds from the US, Australia, Japan etc are so very easy to sell now as outlined in post #84.

baddabing baddaboom It costs $1000USD for a loaf of bread.

Nope. It would only cost $1000 a loaf if the resources required to make a loaf of bread can't meet market demand. Prices after all are generally determined by supply/demand. The US is not Zimbabwe or Argentina. It's resource rich, stable and affluent. Nothing like post-war ravaged Germany, nothing like the socialist-dicatatorship of Robert Mugabe and nothing like corrupt and inept Venezuela.

I won't say it won't happen, but the probability of it happening is probably in the region of the probability of the US defaulting which is about 0.3% when I last looked.

So to summarise, if you were considering the likelihood of a US default as a risk criteria in how you should manage your investments, you'd have it down near the "highly unlikely" mark, alongside the Second Coming of Jesus or getting killed by an asteroid impact. :)
 
Thanks to the Japanese government high level of spending, there is a lot of savings to be had by the Japanese people/ private sector. :)

Whereas Australian government has relative low spending, therefore the people/private sector has low savings.

I think that statement is wrong. Between home ownership and superannuation, Australians have a high level of savings, albeit that it is not easily drawn upon.
 
I think that statement is wrong. Between home ownership and superannuation, Australians have a high level of savings, albeit that it is not easily drawn upon.

I don't consider it savings (one major reason you mentioned), so I'm happy to stand by my statement.

I would rather say Australia has a high level of gambling and investment which is based on increasing private debt (lack of savings).
 
Last edited:
@leo25 what do you include in the savings bucket in Japan? Just bank savings accounts?

No, it can be anything that can be access relatively quickly and without conditions.

The reason i don't count housing (for most people) is that;
1) it can take a long time to sell and access money from it.
2) Most people take on a lot of debt to buy the house, so even when you sell it (in a rush) most, if not all of the money will just go back to paying off the debt. Then you will still be stuck needing to either buy or rent another place and still in need of money. (again, for most people)
 
Last edited:
The problem Japan has is it’s ridiculously high levels of debt that has kept them sustained over the past 30 years. They managed to sell most of those bonds to their own people. The majority is owned by its citizens which has kept the rates low. But they have a very big demographic problem with the majority of their bond holders starting to enter retirement and need the cash from those bonds. They’ll have to go to the market to renew the debt. They could monetise through their central bank or they could reduce their US assets to bring down their own debt.
 
BOJ has stated it will buy an unlimited number of government bonds, I think they used to have a cap on the amount of bonds they purchased annually.
 
Back
Top