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"that can in principle be sold back to the market at a later date" What's the material difference, in your opinion, between the threat of the central bank sell

"that can in principle be sold back to the market at a later date" What's the material difference, in your opinion, between the threat of the central bank selling back existing government bonds, and the government just creating new bonds of precisely the same type. There is no money in circulation. All that has happened is that the type of savings has changed - from holding government bonds to holding bank deposits. And that just means the term and interest rate has changed on the financial instrument. The fundamental problem is the belief in interest rates and how they work is wrong in practice. People hold savings for a myriad of reasons.

JProthero 6y ago
> What's the material difference, in your opinion, between the threat of the central bank selling back existing government bonds, and the government just creating new bonds of precisely the same type. In the former case (where the central bank sells back government bonds it has previously purchased from investors as part of a quantitative easing scheme), all else being equal, money is withdrawn from circulation and the total stock of government debt remains the same. In the latter case (where the central bank does not sell any of the government bonds acquired from investors and the government issues new bonds of equal value instead), the total stock of government debt increases, and assuming the government spends the money raised from selling the new bonds as is usually the case, the amount of money in general circulation remains the same (though investors in government bonds have less of it, to the extent that they are not net recipients of the increased government spending). This is assuming the simplest model; in practice of course, the details will differ consequentially depending on how these processes operate in different jurisdictions. For example, to the best of my knowledge the central banks I'm most familiar with are required to remit interest payments on government debt back to their national treasuries; and in the European Union, direct central bank monetisation of government debt is supposed to be illegal — things like this complicate the picture in reality. I can see from your other comments that you are well-informed about these details, so I would defer to you there.

JProthero 6y ago

> What's the material difference, in your opinion, between the threat of the central bank selling back existing government bonds, and the government just creating new bonds of precisely the same type. In the former case (where the central bank sells back government bonds it has previously purchased from investors as part of a quantitative easing scheme), all else being equal, money is withdrawn from circulation and the total stock of government debt remains the same. In the latter case (where the central bank does not sell any of the government bonds acquired from investors and the government issues new bonds of equal value instead), the total stock of government debt increases, and assuming the government spends the money raised from selling the new bonds as is usually the case, the amount of money in general circulation remains the same (though investors in government bonds have less of it, to the extent that they are not net recipients of the increased government spending). This is assuming the simplest model; in practice of course, the details will differ consequentially depending on how these processes operate in different jurisdictions. For example, to the best of my knowledge the central banks I'm most familiar with are required to remit interest payments on government debt back to their national treasuries; and in the European Union, direct central bank monetisation of government debt is supposed to be illegal — things like this complicate the picture in reality. I can see from your other comments that you are well-informed about these details, so I would defer to you there.