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Thankfully, it is not ONLY taxpayers, but rather, all market participants that make use of the US dollar. Which, considering it is the reserve currency of the
by cykros 4y ago
Thankfully, it is not ONLY taxpayers, but rather, all market participants that make use of the US dollar. Which, considering it is the reserve currency of the world, is a lot more than simply US taxpayers. Admittedly, the Federal Reserve does purchase primarily securities that do end up in one form or other as the obligation of the US Government (either treasury securities, or agency MBS's), but by and large, they don't seem to take much issue with payment in the form of principle and interest through issuance of further debt. For an illustration of this in action, see here: https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttrends.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren....
Ultimately, does this mean the taxpayer is getting a higher and higher national debt? Sure. But if it's never something being paid off, then the cost of this arrangement ultimately falls to those faced with an ever larger growing money supply, which, again, is the population of Earth. Though, a curious thing happened this year, when Russia was kicked off of SWIFT, and an alliance of those willing to do business with them outside of the dollar markets started to emerge, which does threaten to throw quite a bit of turbulence if suddenly the percentage of the globe we're spreading out the cost of inflation to shrinks drastically. We've fought wars to protect the dollar's reserve status before (just ask Gaddhafi), and it does seem that sooner or later there'll come a breaking point -- but this is hard to say for sure, as we are ultimately in uncharted territory.
Basically, like it or not, most of the rest of the world is wrapped up enough in this that the taxpayers can hardly be said to be alone, except for those who seem to be in the process of crafting lifeboats for themselves. Whether that's a consolation to anyone is a question I leave up to you to decide for yourself.