Well, too bad. Cause it’s been that way for a long long time. And nobody is going back. Unscrupulous politicians have ALWAYS been able to create debt, or money, whenever they want. Part of the power of being a king.
The words on printed money mean NOTHING. Money, in any form, has always been powered by one thing and one thing only: people’s willingness to take it in payment for goods and services. CONFIDENCE is the only thing that has ever backed a currency. The whole reason gold backed currency was invented is because precious metal coins had been currency through so much of the world for so long people had forgotten that it wasn’t actually worth anything by itself, it only had value because people were willing to take it in payment. By “backing” the printed currency they convinced people paper money was a stand-in for the coins. That was a LIE. Paper money was never a stand-in for anything. But by telling that lie they CONVINCED people to BELIEVE in the paper currency. Thus giving it the confidence money needs to be real.
And again, once fractional banking was invented, with all of the money stand-ins that it requires to even exist, the whole concept of backed currency became a complete fiction. You put that dollar in the bank and they lend out 90 cents of it. But they usually don’t lend out 90 physical cents. It’s part of a check (or cheque in the old days, really once you look into the history or it all you’ll realize how long people have believed complete BS about money). And that check goes to somebody and eventually lands in a bank, and they lend 81 cents of that, etc etc. The general rule of thumb for fractional backing is that the denominator of the fraction has to keep “on hand” (in most countries it’s 1/10, so 10) is how many dollars that saved dollar turns into.
And that’s where things get very interesting. So you put a dollar in the bank and it turns into 10 dollars in the economy. In a backed currency which of those 10 dollars is backed? Cause you can’t back all 10, there’s whole math problem there, not to mention the fact that technically they don’t even really exist. So which one is it? Well it’s obvious really: the physical one. The one you put in the bank. So that dollar you so strongly believe in because you think backing currency matters isn’t even yours. If somehow the backing of the currency comes to matter THE BANK has your dollar, and gets the gold.
And that is why gold backed is stupid. And people who want it just don’t understand money. It was ALWAYS a complete LIE. All that happened when we dumped it is we stopped lying. And went with what money has always been about: confidence.
I like your little example there about the fake assets. Cause here’s an interesting thing about that, yes indeed it is very much illegal BUT if you manage to pay off the loan nobody gives a damn. And a lot of the biggest most important loans that happen are built on those kind of fictions. It’s a game of chicken companies play, use overstated assets to buy something that will generate revenue, use the revenue to pay off the loan, and hopefully doesn’t come tumbling down. Of course sometimes they fail and we get Enron. But most of the time the loan gets paid and nobody cares.
You make my point.
There are no restrictions on how much money is created with the stroke of some computer key.
The requirement that a government hold an appropriate amount of gold would prevent some of the craziness.
I believe that referring to paper money is a mistake.
We should refer to it as vapor money.
I appreciate your reminding me of how banks loan money, the same money, multiple times. I have known that for a long time but had forgot.
We will never agree today, or even this month, but if you are less than 70 years old the chance is very good that you will live long enough to find out that something must be done to get federal spending under control.
Biden has already cost me more than $400,000 but I still have enough to make it if he can be restrained for the remainder of his term.