Is it scary how fast the Feds are printing money? Should I be worried about it??

Okay, so it wasn't too long ago when Series 2006A $100's were first spotted around the US. Same goes for the Series 2009 $20's.

Yesterday, I was surprised to see a 2006A KB-E $100 in circulation. So I decided to look up the Series, since I haven't really checked up on it in a while, and New York 2006A $100's are already up to the KB-G block! Should I be concerned that the BEP is spitting $100's out so fast? Can't that cause major inflation? It just seems faster than normal, Series 2006 $100's were similarly bad, but I don't think they were this bad. Then I received a 2009 $20 JB-E, and that seems a little fast too!

I don't know, maybe it's always this fast and it could just be in my head, but dang! I mean, 2006A $100 KB-G block already??! Dang! My teller is also holding a $100 KK* for me.

-tbud

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Heck yeah it's causing major inflation! I've been feeling it for quite some time.

 

Yea,the current regime just keeps printing more and more with nothing to back it up. That's why soon our dollar will be useless.

 

We should burn some bills to undo inflation, then go back to the gold standard. Keep dreaming, keep on dreaming.

 

They have to keep a certain Amt in circulation, they also destroy a certain Amt. of paper currency every year. Inflation was bound to happen after we changed over from the silver standard in 1965. History repeats itself just look at the roman empire it's very similar

 

edited

 

Inflation caused by cheaper coins being minted because the government was spending too much money, sometimes the emperor would steal money from the government to pay for parties. The Roman Republic fell apart because of too much political struggle, which lead to the Roman Empire in the first place, yet I do not feel like having an emperor. One year during the empire, five emperors had power for some time. So yes, at least for the moment, history is repeating itself. And remember, the Romans destroyed Greece, which was prided as the most intelligent country in the world. I truly wonder if that is possible to repeat in the modern age...

 

What would be a major red flag to me, is if the BEP opens up another printing facility or greatly expands one. They can't say it's just to satisfy collector needs or demands. Wasn't that and bullion, the reason they gave for the mint at West Point and the conversion of San Franciso's mint? That wouldn't fly for the BEP.

 

I'm glad it's not just in my head, yet upset to see my country being ruined. I wonder if it's too late for America to return to "the good old days".

Does President Obama have anything to do with the increase of production of FRN's? I do know that he is the first president to print money for the specific purpose of paying debts....

 

The "good old days" are the reason we are in this mess. Yes, standards of living were high and all seemed good, but in truth our country as a whole has been living above it's means for a looooong time. The last 60 years have been a facade. We have never paid enough for gas, never paid enough for food, and never paid enough taxes. You can only live on borrowed money for so long before the lender comes knockin. America has been living in an oblivious daydream, now it's time to wake up.

 

Easy for you to say... I'm younger and have to deal with the repercussions of idiotic decisions from those before my time for the rest of my life. I don't think our country living above our means has been the problem, I think people in power straying from the path of the original purpose and size of government is the reason my generation and the generation after me will be picking up the economic shambles left for us. The FEDS spend 500,000$ PER SECOND, just trying to comprehend that ****es me off excessively.

 

Hey man, don't put me in the grave just yet, I'm only 37!

High pay and cheap cost of living make people happy, therefore we elected our leaders based upon who would provide these conditions. Every system of government has strengths and weaknesses. The primary weakness of a democratic system is that the power lies in the hands of the people (at least the power to select those that lead), however, the average citizen simply does not have the knowledge base to make an educated decision on the matter. Our leaders have to pander to us to get elected, even though the results of the pandering are not beneficial to our society in the long run.

 

edited

 

It is to supply collector and more importantly investor, and hoarder demand. Besides the silver eagles selling like hot cakes is the only reason the mint made like 2 billion dollars last year instead of losing money. The money made from the ASE and AGE programs are what's keeping the mint producing anything other than business strikes for circulation.
As for the BEP it can't fly. We are going against the grain of rational economics here. As for the comments about Greece they are destroying themselves with their free healthcare (sound familiar?) and other spending adventures and are as of March 17th already in semi-default. They have received international bailout from lenders and in order to receive another one they had to default on their bonds held within their country (kind of like our Treasury bonds, notes and bills). The terms were something like no one could cash out, everyone had to accept the new terms, new longer term bonds being issued for half the price of the old ones. So basically if you held one million in their debt you got new bonds for 500 thousand dollars and instead of being 10 years they might be 20 or even 30 year terms now. Just an FYI Spain is already lining up behind Greece for bailout and declairing default. Ireland and Portugal are not in default yet but have received international bailout. Germany and Switzerland two of the few economically sound countries is considering pulling out of the European union (having to use Euro's) over all of this.
As for the question of Obama. No he isn't in control of printing money or how much. Monitary issues are at a micro level controlled by the BEP/Mint and their directors. However they can't do anything without approval from the next level which is the Treasury Dept. and the Federal Reserve (specifically the Chairman). Remember the first talk of workers and social security recipiants getting $250 to jumpstart the economy? The reason it was started and then the plug pulled is he didn't have the ok and when the treasury started crunching numbers they realized they couldn't afford it. The fed and treasury in turn take their orders from the men behind the curtain to allude to Oz; the treasury commitee of congress and congress itself. So unfortunately the president no matter who can't do a thing and doesn't have much in mind for the problem either. If we want things to ever get better the congress (all of them) need to be voted out and get more "fiscally conservative" (meaning those who don't want big governement and big spending and lots of government workers to have to give vacations, raises and benifits to) senators and representatives in charge.

 

Also something else I forgot to mention as a FYI. If the U.S. and some of the bigger European powers (France and England) fall into default the rest will also tumble like domino's. I was reading a disturbing article that in the aftermath of global colapse we could very well go not only on a gold/silver/platinum standard but countries wouldn't be able to produce their own money. All fiat monetary systems would be obsolete. We would either go on a global currency or worse yet system like I think Sweden and Switzerland are trying where you use only plastic no more bills or coin of any kind. It's all credit/debit cards, wireless bank transfers, and travelers checks. Let's just hope it all doesn't come down to this.

 

FWIW - and among some xanax addicts, it won't matter, but FWIW, the new bills in circulation are partly offset by the governments purposeful removal of the older, and less secure bills. In addition, I'm sure the that 1.1 6mnth CD rates is making a lot of people just hold onto cash.

Ruben

 

OK, OK, everybody calm down.
Let's look at the facts. The previous series $100 (2006) had over 4.5 BILLION notes printed, and the New York District was up into the HB-R printings. The New York District, recently, has the most notes printed. The majority of the rest of the Districts barely made it into the B,C, or D suffix. For the current series (2006A), once again New York is the highest, with most of the other districts still with suffix A. I don't think anybody should be wringing their hands yet. Sometimes we forget that the BEP is printing a global currency.

 

These are hardly the times to calm down, roll over and let the Government do as they please. Sometimes you gotta get mad, especially when things are going south so fast they are falling off the bottom of the earth.

 

OK everyone, if you want to discuss the printing of bills and such that is fine...but you know the rules about politics. I don't want to see anymore suggestions of who should be voted for to fix this or that we should overthrow the government type talk. Stick to the currency or the thread will be closed. Consider this a warning.

 

What a lot of people are forgetting is that most money doesn't exist in physical paper form anyway. In a modern economy, it's virtually impossible to cause inflation by printing too much literal paper money, because the government doesn't spend paper money any more--there's no way they could force more paper notes into circulation than the market demanded.

The balance between paper money and other forms of money is a matter of demand. If lots of people decide they want to use credit cards and Paypal and not cash, then the amount of paper money in circulation will decrease. If lots of people decide they want to hoard physical paper cash, then the amount of paper money in circulation will increase, and the BEP will have to speed up its presses to meet that demand. The latter is what's been happening these past few years: in many countries, people have responded to economic uncertainty by hoarding U.S. currency, especially $100 notes, so the BEP has had to print them at an unprecedented rate.

None of this has anything to do with "printing money" in the macroeconomic sense--increasing the money supply by running up the government debt. That's done by issuing government bonds, which are generally not even printed in paper form any more, to make up the difference between tax receipts and government spending. Theoretically, if the government went so deeply into debt that massive inflation resulted, then the demand for higher-denomination paper money would increase and the BEP would have to print even more $100's (or $1000's, or whatever). But that would be a result of inflation, not a cause of inflation.

In other words, the BEP's production of paper money is at best a lagging indicator of what the economy is doing. Don't try to *predict* where the economy is going by looking at serial numbers....