Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

Government can't save money but it's not because they don't want to, it's actually impossible. Are they going to put it in a bank? The money in banks isn't saved either. Are they going to put paper bills in a vault somewhere like Fort Knox? That's not efficient even if a trillion dollar bill was printed to save space. Right now government buys Treasuries from themselves, but how is transferring money from one hand to the other, and getting nothing but a promise from yourself in return, saving money?

There is no way a government that creates imaginary money can save it because they're the ones that guarantee the imaginary money is real in the first place; if they can do that, why not just print more money when they need it? In fact, that's what they really do. It's correct to say that money not spent is saved but that same argument could be used to justify never spending money, so “saving” isn't really the correct word for not spending; frugality is. Saving means money is collected ahead of time, like Social Security, which isn't saved anywhere; it's spent too. Accounting gymnastics aside, the best government can do is imagine it's saving imaginary money.