14 ms·
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 m
by 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 agoThe 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.