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I just don't get this about the system in the US. If you keep creating money out of thin air — which as per my admittedly naive understanding is equivalent to

by 2143 4y ago

I just don't get this about the system in the US. If you keep creating money out of thin air — which as per my admittedly naive understanding is equivalent to just printing money without giving back anything in return — wouldn't it ultimately lead to a collapse or a hyper inflation? Like it did in Venezuela a few years ago (???). Why is the US seemingly immune to this kind of thing?

HWR_14 4y ago
In US the fed determines how much money is printed. The EU, UK, Japan, Switzerland, and China have similar central banks. Most countries do, but those are some major players (I left some out). Basically, if you print the right amount of money, it works. So they get smart Econ experts to guess how much money to print. And as long as they get close enough it doesn't cause hyperinflation.
- CraigJPerry 4y ago
  This isn’t an accurate description of the mechanics of money printing in the US, the UK or the EU.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    Interpreting "printing money" to replace the more technical "controlling the size of the monetary base[1]" seems reasonable. How is that incorrect? Unless you're talking about literal printing press operations, "the fed tries to tweak the money supply to control inflation as one of its dual mandates" seems like an absolute correct, if simple, explanation of why we don't have hyperinflation. (I know tone is hard to convey. I am serious about learning if I have a misunderstanding) [1] https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2018/july/federal-reserve-control-supply-money https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2018/july/federal-...
    - CraigJPerry 4y ago
      >> Interpreting "printing money" to replace the more technical "controlling the size of the monetary base[1]" These are different things. Printed money is cash (or currency) and it represents a small amount of the total money in use, just under 3% in the UK. I don't have the figure to hand for the US but it's comparable, less than an order of magnitude difference. Printing money isn't a significant driver of the size of the monetary base, currency is (more or less) printed to replace the notes & coins that are guessed to have been lost or damaged. Talk about printing money, especially as a means to expand the monetary base, is usually misguided. The monetary base consists of currency in circulation + reserve balances. Reserve balances in the US, since March 2020 (Fed reserve requirements changed to 0%), refers only to the balance recorded in the account at the central bank for a given commerical bank (or other approved user of reserves). Reserves are money but they're a special kind of money that can't be spent in the economy. They're only usable by the central bank and institutions who are licenced to hold reserves at the central bank (predominantly commercial banks). They're not phyiscal (reserves used to include actual cash in the vault back when there were reserve requirements). Reserves, like most money today, just exist as rows in a DB on a computer. There's an unlimited supply of reserves available to commercial banks (via the discount window), they are created on demand as needed from nothing by the central bank and charged at the discount rate in unlimited supply. A commercial bank today cannot run out of reserves. >> the fed tries to tweak the money supply The fed doesn't control much of the money supply, most of our money is created as commercial banks issue new loans. There's a common misunderstanding that commercial banks operate as intermediaries lending deposits, but they don't.
      - bubbleRefuge 4y ago
        100% + I'd expand by saying the Fed uses its operations to control the price of money, which is interest rates, not the supply of money. The supply of money has many factors such as how many loans are created, etc. Taxes paid. etc beyond the Feds operational control.
        jnwatson 4y ago
        That’s a rather pedantic interpretation. Yes the Fed doesn’t run the printing press, and it doesn’t set M1, but it controls the levers. That’s like saying to the police officer: “I didn’t speed, I merely pressed on this pedal that’s connected to a rod that opened a valve providing more fuel to the engine that’s connected to the wheels”.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
pearjuice 4y ago
>Why is the US seemingly immune to this kind of thing? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_... Not trying to be a low-effort reply but any Economy 101 textbook will theorize that it's impossible. Practically, the world is too dependent on the USD in one way or another. If they try to break loose, they might get confronted with those military expenditures which is a good enough incentive to keep using USD as a global reserve currency.
- notahacker 4y ago
  No, really, this argument is even worse ignorance than the gold standard stuff, because it isn't true even as an oversimplification or historical detail. The difference between Venezuela and any relatively stable country (the US is one of many, some of which have tiny armies and pacifist foreign policies) isn't military spending or reserve currency status, it's that the money in the country with the stable currency is created as a debt which the borrower and bank has to be repay in future (with the central bank also intervening if it thinks too many borrowers and banks are taking on debts) whereas the money in places like Venezuela is being created to pay off debts.
  - pearjuice 4y ago
    >which the borrower and bank has to be repay in future And when do you expect this debt to be repaid back? If you cycle all the way back, at some point the money is created out of thin air backed by nothing but believe that the US will not default. It's not ignorance but reality that as long as you are the strongest arm in the room nobody is going to challenge you into paying back your debts. Yes, on paper it's all economically sound and "basic accounting" but the reality of the situation is that if America would not be able to defend its position as "stable country", nobody would accept their debt denoted in the currency they create themselves.
    - notahacker 4y ago
      > And when do you expect this debt to be repaid back? According to the terms of the loan or repo or maturity date of the bond. The money isn't "backed by nothing" it's backed by the productive capacity of an economy, and virtually all of it is created by market demand for credit, not the demand of the US government. > It's not ignorance but reality that as long as you are the strongest arm in the room nobody is going to challenge you into paying back your debts. It's absolutely ignorance to base your arguments about how a monetary system works on the assumption that the US is the only country in the world with a stable currency and modern central banking. The majority of the developed world is not "the strongest arm in the room" and people happily use those countries' currency and buy up their domestic-currency-denominated sovereign debt without any worries about hyperinflation or their military. The military is of significance only to the extent that the dollar wouldn't be worth very much if the US was on the verge of being annexed by Mexico, but Venezuela has a military that prevents it from being annexed by Colombia too, and its military spending in excess of its productivity is still a cause of rather than a solution to its problems
CraigJPerry 4y ago
There’s over-confidence espoused by economists, the idea that we can measure inflation with any kind of precision is challenging, never mind building on top of this shaky foundation that there are behaviours which regardless of circumstance will lead to a given outcome such as hyper inflation. This is not to say that hyper inflation isnt a severe risk, it is. it’s to say that the mechanisms through which it’s created or avoided are not well understood nor proven.
alxmng 4y ago
Because: 1) taxation destroys money. 2) new money can be absorbed by economic growth. Imagine you have $100 in an economy and 100 apples. $100 is added, so there’s $200/100 apples. Inflation might occur. But if you make 100 more apples, so there’s $200/200 apples, the ratio of money to goods didn’t change, and you wouldn’t get inflation. That’s an extremely contrived example, but it gets the point across. Considering both of those factors, I hope it’s understandable that printing money doesn’t necessarily cause inflation.
- hnuser847 4y ago
  Even in this example where inflation doesn’t occur, consumers will never benefit from the productivity gains that allowed producers to make more apples. Something clearly changed that allowed more apples to be produced. Maybe a significant amount of capital was invested in more machines, or a new, faster growing cultivar of apple was developed. In any case, the entire benefit of the free market economy is that competition creates an arm race for better products at lower prices. When the central bank steps in and creates a bunch of new money, it destroys any benefit of increasing productivity, since apples with always be $1, regardless of whether 100 are produced or 1,000.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    Sure, that's why no consumers have ever benefited from any productivity gains ever... Central banks don't fix the price of apples. They simply make it possible/easier for cultivators of apples to obtain capital to invest in more machines or developing new cultivars of apples. The alternative is that cultivators have to try to find the capital by borrowing more expensively from a fixed supply of stored wealth. From the point of view of people holding the stored wealth, the arms race for better products at lower prices becomes a zero sum game where it's a winning move not to just hold onto the cash and let other people take the risks. Unsurprisingly, this does not benefit consumers, or the productive.
  - bubbleRefuge 4y ago
    Central Banks allow us to pay each other and regulate banks to operate in the best interest of the economy by making 'good' loans. You are describing a gold standard or fixed monetary system. These systems have lead to deflationary collapses time and again. Without getting off of the gold standard as it was defined we would have never funded WW2 which was the larges money printing event in US history equating to 22% of GDP in government deficits.
notahacker 4y ago
The money is mostly created as debt, with the obligation to repay more money. So it's not "not giving anything back in return". A company wants some money to fund business expansion. So it borrows $1m with a promise to pay $1.06m back, which it can fund because it has customers. The bank in turn can fund this by borrowing $1m and promising to pay back $1.03m (when lending activity increases this money comes from the Fed, albeit normally indirectly via its bond market activity). It's not free money for the business: if they don't sell enough stuff they go bankrupt. It's not free money for the bank: if enough of it's customers don't pay they also get bankrupt. So the money created is based on market participants believing that the additional money will result in additional economic activity Additionally, you've got the Fed actively intervening on a day-to-day basis to fix that base interest rate for borrowing and on a month-to-month basis to increase it if it thinks people are borrowing too much and prices are going up too fast
- 2143 4y ago
  Makes sense. Thanks!
- bubbleRefuge 4y ago
  Banks in compliance can create loans on demand. They don't need to borrow the funds.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    Yes in normal circumstances they won't need to immediately borrow the full outstanding amount of the loan to convert it to cash, but the fact they can borrow £1m in reserves at that rate to the extent capital weighting rules or withdrawal demands require it is critical to why the £1m credit they add in the borrower's account is treated as money by other banks and their customers. As is the detail that the bank's profit is only the difference between the interest rate paid by the business and the bank: the bit they create "from thin air" isn't their asset, it's a liability they may be required to borrow to pay some other bank or customer.
    - 4y ago

by 2143 4y ago

HWR_14 4y ago

In US the fed determines how much money is printed. The EU, UK, Japan, Switzerland, and China have similar central banks. Most countries do, but those are some major players (I left some out). Basically, if you print the right amount of money, it works. So they get smart Econ experts to guess how much money to print. And as long as they get close enough it doesn't cause hyperinflation.

CraigJPerry 4y ago
This isn’t an accurate description of the mechanics of money printing in the US, the UK or the EU.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  Interpreting "printing money" to replace the more technical "controlling the size of the monetary base[1]" seems reasonable. How is that incorrect? Unless you're talking about literal printing press operations, "the fed tries to tweak the money supply to control inflation as one of its dual mandates" seems like an absolute correct, if simple, explanation of why we don't have hyperinflation. (I know tone is hard to convey. I am serious about learning if I have a misunderstanding) [1] https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2018/july/federal-reserve-control-supply-money https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2018/july/federal-...
  - CraigJPerry 4y ago
    >> Interpreting "printing money" to replace the more technical "controlling the size of the monetary base[1]" These are different things. Printed money is cash (or currency) and it represents a small amount of the total money in use, just under 3% in the UK. I don't have the figure to hand for the US but it's comparable, less than an order of magnitude difference. Printing money isn't a significant driver of the size of the monetary base, currency is (more or less) printed to replace the notes & coins that are guessed to have been lost or damaged. Talk about printing money, especially as a means to expand the monetary base, is usually misguided. The monetary base consists of currency in circulation + reserve balances. Reserve balances in the US, since March 2020 (Fed reserve requirements changed to 0%), refers only to the balance recorded in the account at the central bank for a given commerical bank (or other approved user of reserves). Reserves are money but they're a special kind of money that can't be spent in the economy. They're only usable by the central bank and institutions who are licenced to hold reserves at the central bank (predominantly commercial banks). They're not phyiscal (reserves used to include actual cash in the vault back when there were reserve requirements). Reserves, like most money today, just exist as rows in a DB on a computer. There's an unlimited supply of reserves available to commercial banks (via the discount window), they are created on demand as needed from nothing by the central bank and charged at the discount rate in unlimited supply. A commercial bank today cannot run out of reserves. >> the fed tries to tweak the money supply The fed doesn't control much of the money supply, most of our money is created as commercial banks issue new loans. There's a common misunderstanding that commercial banks operate as intermediaries lending deposits, but they don't.
    - bubbleRefuge 4y ago
      100% + I'd expand by saying the Fed uses its operations to control the price of money, which is interest rates, not the supply of money. The supply of money has many factors such as how many loans are created, etc. Taxes paid. etc beyond the Feds operational control.
      - jnwatson 4y ago
        That’s a rather pedantic interpretation. Yes the Fed doesn’t run the printing press, and it doesn’t set M1, but it controls the levers. That’s like saying to the police officer: “I didn’t speed, I merely pressed on this pedal that’s connected to a rod that opened a valve providing more fuel to the engine that’s connected to the wheels”.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

pearjuice 4y ago

>Why is the US seemingly immune to this kind of thing? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_... Not trying to be a low-effort reply but any Economy 101 textbook will theorize that it's impossible. Practically, the world is too dependent on the USD in one way or another. If they try to break loose, they might get confronted with those military expenditures which is a good enough incentive to keep using USD as a global reserve currency.

notahacker 4y ago
No, really, this argument is even worse ignorance than the gold standard stuff, because it isn't true even as an oversimplification or historical detail. The difference between Venezuela and any relatively stable country (the US is one of many, some of which have tiny armies and pacifist foreign policies) isn't military spending or reserve currency status, it's that the money in the country with the stable currency is created as a debt which the borrower and bank has to be repay in future (with the central bank also intervening if it thinks too many borrowers and banks are taking on debts) whereas the money in places like Venezuela is being created to pay off debts.
- pearjuice 4y ago
  >which the borrower and bank has to be repay in future And when do you expect this debt to be repaid back? If you cycle all the way back, at some point the money is created out of thin air backed by nothing but believe that the US will not default. It's not ignorance but reality that as long as you are the strongest arm in the room nobody is going to challenge you into paying back your debts. Yes, on paper it's all economically sound and "basic accounting" but the reality of the situation is that if America would not be able to defend its position as "stable country", nobody would accept their debt denoted in the currency they create themselves.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    > And when do you expect this debt to be repaid back? According to the terms of the loan or repo or maturity date of the bond. The money isn't "backed by nothing" it's backed by the productive capacity of an economy, and virtually all of it is created by market demand for credit, not the demand of the US government. > It's not ignorance but reality that as long as you are the strongest arm in the room nobody is going to challenge you into paying back your debts. It's absolutely ignorance to base your arguments about how a monetary system works on the assumption that the US is the only country in the world with a stable currency and modern central banking. The majority of the developed world is not "the strongest arm in the room" and people happily use those countries' currency and buy up their domestic-currency-denominated sovereign debt without any worries about hyperinflation or their military. The military is of significance only to the extent that the dollar wouldn't be worth very much if the US was on the verge of being annexed by Mexico, but Venezuela has a military that prevents it from being annexed by Colombia too, and its military spending in excess of its productivity is still a cause of rather than a solution to its problems

CraigJPerry 4y ago

There’s over-confidence espoused by economists, the idea that we can measure inflation with any kind of precision is challenging, never mind building on top of this shaky foundation that there are behaviours which regardless of circumstance will lead to a given outcome such as hyper inflation. This is not to say that hyper inflation isnt a severe risk, it is. it’s to say that the mechanisms through which it’s created or avoided are not well understood nor proven.

alxmng 4y ago

Because: 1) taxation destroys money. 2) new money can be absorbed by economic growth. Imagine you have $100 in an economy and 100 apples. $100 is added, so there’s $200/100 apples. Inflation might occur. But if you make 100 more apples, so there’s $200/200 apples, the ratio of money to goods didn’t change, and you wouldn’t get inflation. That’s an extremely contrived example, but it gets the point across. Considering both of those factors, I hope it’s understandable that printing money doesn’t necessarily cause inflation.

hnuser847 4y ago
Even in this example where inflation doesn’t occur, consumers will never benefit from the productivity gains that allowed producers to make more apples. Something clearly changed that allowed more apples to be produced. Maybe a significant amount of capital was invested in more machines, or a new, faster growing cultivar of apple was developed. In any case, the entire benefit of the free market economy is that competition creates an arm race for better products at lower prices. When the central bank steps in and creates a bunch of new money, it destroys any benefit of increasing productivity, since apples with always be $1, regardless of whether 100 are produced or 1,000.
- notahacker 4y ago
  Sure, that's why no consumers have ever benefited from any productivity gains ever... Central banks don't fix the price of apples. They simply make it possible/easier for cultivators of apples to obtain capital to invest in more machines or developing new cultivars of apples. The alternative is that cultivators have to try to find the capital by borrowing more expensively from a fixed supply of stored wealth. From the point of view of people holding the stored wealth, the arms race for better products at lower prices becomes a zero sum game where it's a winning move not to just hold onto the cash and let other people take the risks. Unsurprisingly, this does not benefit consumers, or the productive.
- bubbleRefuge 4y ago
  Central Banks allow us to pay each other and regulate banks to operate in the best interest of the economy by making 'good' loans. You are describing a gold standard or fixed monetary system. These systems have lead to deflationary collapses time and again. Without getting off of the gold standard as it was defined we would have never funded WW2 which was the larges money printing event in US history equating to 22% of GDP in government deficits.

notahacker 4y ago

The money is mostly created as debt, with the obligation to repay more money. So it's not "not giving anything back in return". A company wants some money to fund business expansion. So it borrows $1m with a promise to pay $1.06m back, which it can fund because it has customers. The bank in turn can fund this by borrowing $1m and promising to pay back $1.03m (when lending activity increases this money comes from the Fed, albeit normally indirectly via its bond market activity). It's not free money for the business: if they don't sell enough stuff they go bankrupt. It's not free money for the bank: if enough of it's customers don't pay they also get bankrupt. So the money created is based on market participants believing that the additional money will result in additional economic activity Additionally, you've got the Fed actively intervening on a day-to-day basis to fix that base interest rate for borrowing and on a month-to-month basis to increase it if it thinks people are borrowing too much and prices are going up too fast

2143 4y ago
Makes sense. Thanks!
bubbleRefuge 4y ago
Banks in compliance can create loans on demand. They don't need to borrow the funds.
- notahacker 4y ago
  Yes in normal circumstances they won't need to immediately borrow the full outstanding amount of the loan to convert it to cash, but the fact they can borrow £1m in reserves at that rate to the extent capital weighting rules or withdrawal demands require it is critical to why the £1m credit they add in the borrower's account is treated as money by other banks and their customers. As is the detail that the bank's profit is only the difference between the interest rate paid by the business and the bank: the bit they create "from thin air" isn't their asset, it's a liability they may be required to borrow to pay some other bank or customer.
  - 4y ago