Why The Government Has Infinite Money – Second ThoughtSUBSCRIBE HERE: http://bit.ly/2nFsvTSNew video every other Friday!Citations and Further Reading:Check o...
This really only applies to countries that can exert their will on the global economy. If a country like Venezuela, South Africa, etc tries to just print money, their currency will be devalued and become worthless. Zimbabwe is probably a good modern example of this.
I don’t think that’s entirely accurate, but I’m not knowledgeable enough to address it directly. Instead I’ll quote from Michael Hudson’s book J is for Junk Economics.
Hyperinflation:
Nearly all hyperinflations have stemmed from trying to pay foreign-currency debts far beyond an economy’s ability to earn enough foreign exchange by exporting (see Balance of Payments). (An exception is the case invoked by today’s budget-deficit scaremongers: Zimbabwe’s practice of simply printing domestic money without taxing it back.)
John Stuart Mill explained in 1844 how paying foreign debt service (or military spending as occurred during Britain’s Napoleonic Wars) depreciates the currency. This makes imports more expensive and increases the debt burden as measured in gold or “hard currencies” against domestic currency.
After World War I, Germany was obliged to pay reparations beyond its ability to export. The Reichsbank simply printed marks to sell on foreign exchange markets to obtain the dollars, sterling and other currencies needed to pay the Allies. The plunging exchange rate that ensued raised the price of imports, and hence domestic price levels.
This phenomenon later became a chronic condition for Third World debtors, most notoriously in the hyperinflations of Chile and Argentina to pay for their trade deficits and ensuing foreign debt treadmill. The resulting currency depreciation invariably involves paying extractive foreign debt, not spending public money for domestic social programs or to increase employment. (See Implanted Memory and Inflation.)
Hyperinflation can be stopped by new borrowing (as in the case of U.S. loans to German municipalities in the 1920s and Third World bond-buying in the 1970s), but the cure ultimately requires a Clean Slate to write down debts that exceed an economy’s ability to pay. That is what occurred in 1931 with the moratorium on German reparations and inter-ally debts, and again with Argentina’s default in 2002 and subsequent debt write-downs.
I’ll add that, if a country has relatively self-sufficient domestic production to provide for its own people, then I don’t think foreign exchange rates would be so impactful.
So while it is true that you can’t simply print infinite money (without taxing that money back out of the system), it is so regardless of how large & powerful a country is.
This really only applies to countries that can exert their will on the global economy. If a country like Venezuela, South Africa, etc tries to just print money, their currency will be devalued and become worthless. Zimbabwe is probably a good modern example of this.
I don’t think that’s entirely accurate, but I’m not knowledgeable enough to address it directly. Instead I’ll quote from Michael Hudson’s book J is for Junk Economics.
I’ll add that, if a country has relatively self-sufficient domestic production to provide for its own people, then I don’t think foreign exchange rates would be so impactful.
So while it is true that you can’t simply print infinite money (without taxing that money back out of the system), it is so regardless of how large & powerful a country is.