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Do you understand that all paper money is generated by taking on debt? What I can agree on is that there are different qualities of creditors - yet, the money
by static_noise 11y ago
Do you understand that all paper money is generated by taking on debt?
What I can agree on is that there are different qualities of creditors - yet, the money they generate is traded equally.
Corporations have largely stopped taking on more debt. Usually lowered interest rates have helped here to stimulate growth by lowering the interest rate below the expected profits. But today corporations like Microsoft, Google and Apple, for example do not take on more debt. Instead, they hoard money.
Instead of stimulating growth by giving people more money e.g. through increasing the wages and forcing the companies to take on debt, we're doing it ass-backwards. The population goes into debt, student debt, credit card debt, consumption credit in addition to housing debt to prop up consumation. You are right. That method is not good and it stops working at some point.
You are wrong though, in that debt as such is what brought us into this situation. It is the wrong kind of debt growth which is being stimulated.
The government is already stepping in by taking on large sums of debt in order to keep the system running. How that will turn out is to be debated.
- emp_zealoth 11y agoWell, I think we mostly agree. I don't think debt was the original issue ("what brought us into this situation"). What I personally think is that the whole debt-money creation is just a broken, arbitrary system that the world outgrew (Just like we outgrew classical mechanics - it was sufficient and then turned out to be incomplete) How it will turn out? Painfully, because the assumptions are out of touch with reality. (cough Alan Greenspan cough) More worthless money will be pushed in, rates will remain stuck (or go down!), more "busywork" nth order financial derivatives, the can will be a little further down the road. Up until there will be no way to pretend anymore (what one can't hide away at some point: http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/ http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/)