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Analogies comparing household finances to government finances are pretty apples to oranges. A household can’t easily get unsecured loans below prime, print mone

by 542458 3y ago

Analogies comparing household finances to government finances are pretty apples to oranges. A household can’t easily get unsecured loans below prime, print money to cover debts, or do many other things that governments can.

IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
Government is just a large group of people Financing and even currency issuance depends on trust. I can get a 0% from family and friends if i needed for far more my net worth. With connections I could also get counterfeit and pass it around. It comes down to the fraud triangle: opportunity, incentive, rationalization. The government may have more leeway to commit fraud than an individual. But the comparison is still apt, the fraud is the same, whether its a house being paid with CC or GPD with govt bonds. Ignore that at your own peril
- mindslight 3y ago
  The dynamics are similar in many ways, but not the same. Scale and occupying a significant part of a market create their own qualities. Government bonds are closer to shares in a company than personal debt, or even corporate debt for that matter. Many people want to own government debt as a stable store of value. Even moreso as the global military hegemon, where other countries want to own the government's debt as a stable store of value. Conversely, the US government has also spent the last 40+ years abusing the fallacy that loaning money is completely different than spending, which has grotesquely distorted the financial industry and the housing market. So the sooner we shove off these misguided notions, like that the government's balance sheet is anything like a private balance sheet (and even worse, that the Federal Reserve's balance sheet is somehow distinct from the government's!), the better. Modern Monetary Theory is more in line with the actually-conservative Austrian School than the hybrid catastrophe of the past four decades.
exoverito 3y ago
Still, there's no free lunch. You can see this clearly with smaller nations that try those strategies. If the US government has to do those things then there are negative repercussions in the form of distorted interest rates, inflation, capital misallocation, etc. All else equal it's obviously beneficial to have a balanced budget, low debt, and organic economic growth from dynamic markets. The federal government still has the exorbitant privilege of the USD as the global reserve currency, so can export much of its inflation across the world. Though at the end of the day these trends matter, and the long term debt cycle, coupled with worsening domestic issues, does not bode well with increasingly powerful strategic rivals and proxy wars.

by 542458 3y ago

IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago

Government is just a large group of people Financing and even currency issuance depends on trust. I can get a 0% from family and friends if i needed for far more my net worth. With connections I could also get counterfeit and pass it around. It comes down to the fraud triangle: opportunity, incentive, rationalization. The government may have more leeway to commit fraud than an individual. But the comparison is still apt, the fraud is the same, whether its a house being paid with CC or GPD with govt bonds. Ignore that at your own peril

mindslight 3y ago
The dynamics are similar in many ways, but not the same. Scale and occupying a significant part of a market create their own qualities. Government bonds are closer to shares in a company than personal debt, or even corporate debt for that matter. Many people want to own government debt as a stable store of value. Even moreso as the global military hegemon, where other countries want to own the government's debt as a stable store of value. Conversely, the US government has also spent the last 40+ years abusing the fallacy that loaning money is completely different than spending, which has grotesquely distorted the financial industry and the housing market. So the sooner we shove off these misguided notions, like that the government's balance sheet is anything like a private balance sheet (and even worse, that the Federal Reserve's balance sheet is somehow distinct from the government's!), the better. Modern Monetary Theory is more in line with the actually-conservative Austrian School than the hybrid catastrophe of the past four decades.

exoverito 3y ago

Still, there's no free lunch. You can see this clearly with smaller nations that try those strategies. If the US government has to do those things then there are negative repercussions in the form of distorted interest rates, inflation, capital misallocation, etc. All else equal it's obviously beneficial to have a balanced budget, low debt, and organic economic growth from dynamic markets. The federal government still has the exorbitant privilege of the USD as the global reserve currency, so can export much of its inflation across the world. Though at the end of the day these trends matter, and the long term debt cycle, coupled with worsening domestic issues, does not bode well with increasingly powerful strategic rivals and proxy wars.