The Fed

[Martin Hash]

The Fed owns $4 trillion (including QE) of the Debt, Foreigners own $6 trillion, and the other $10 trillion is so-called "retirement." (What a joke.)

I could never understand why Libertarians hated The Fed. What does raising and lowering interbank interest rates have to do with the economy? Then it dawned on me that the one BIG thing The Fed does is print money. The U.S. government can't get foreigners to buy enough Treasuries to cover the budget deficit every year, so The Fed buys them. It's the fiscal economics part of The Fed that Libertarians don't like because Libertarians are monetarists. They're monetarists because they're Royalists: how can a handful of people ever own everything if The Fed keeps printing money?

Who Owns the Debt?

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

how can a handful of people ever own everything if The Fed keeps printing money?

[SuburbanFarmer]

Lolwut

[Speaker to Animals]

How can anybody ultimately own anything if the Fed keeps printing money?

[DBTrek]

You can own all the gold but not all the dollars?
Is that what you’re getting at?

[Speaker to Animals]

You can own all the gold but not all the dollars?
Is that what you’re getting at?

You can certainly own the paper dollars. How much that paper is worth to you and others depends on several factors relevant to this discussion.

[Martin Hash]

How can anybody ultimately own anything if the Fed keeps printing money?

Royalist.

[Martin Hash]

As an exercise to understand how money is imaginary:

Imagine the $20 trillion debt was declared void. How is that any different than right now? Obviously, nobody needed the $20 trillion otherwise how did get there, and there isn't $20 trillion anyway - there's nothing. There's always been nothing, it's imaginary.

[Speaker to Animals]

Zimbabwe

[SuburbanFarmer]

As an exercise to understand how money is imaginary:

Imagine the $20 trillion debt was declared void. How is that any different than right now? Obviously, nobody needed the $20 trillion otherwise how did get there, and there isn't $20 trillion anyway - there's nothing. There's always been nothing, it's imaginary.

Well, a whole shitload of bond-holders would be pissed at losing their 'savings'. Banks and foreign governments would start going bankrupt pretty quickly, without our massive interest payments, and the dollar would be declared worthless overnight.

Without some alternative means of exchange, everything would stop, and we'd go Mad Max. Sounds great, let's do it.