Well and that’s the point a lot of people miss - that $9T isn’t like $9T one-dollar bills. Essentially the government got to spend $9T “for free” (don’t come a

Well and that’s the point a lot of people miss - that $9T isn’t like $9T one-dollar bills. Essentially the government got to spend $9T “for free” (don’t come at me inflation hawks) one time and this is the accounting convention that forces us to remember that happened. If the Fed just decided to mark those treasuries to 0 and not collect the interest, who is going to stop them? Things generally get very weird when you get to national-account level accounting for countries with reserve currencies.