Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Numbers, post: 1409215, member: 11668&quot;]What a lot of people are forgetting is that most money doesn&#039;t exist in physical paper form anyway.&nbsp; In a modern economy, it&#039;s virtually impossible to cause inflation by printing too much literal paper money, because the government doesn&#039;t spend paper money any more--there&#039;s no way they could force more paper notes into circulation than the market demanded.</p><p><br /></p><p>The balance between paper money and other forms of money is a matter of demand.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The latter is what&#039;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.</p><p><br /></p><p>None of this has anything to do with &quot;printing money&quot; in the macroeconomic sense--increasing the money supply by running up the government debt.&nbsp; That&#039;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.&nbsp; 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&#039;s (or $1000&#039;s, or whatever).&nbsp; But that would be a result of inflation, not a cause of inflation.</p><p><br /></p><p>In other words, the BEP&#039;s production of paper money is at best a lagging indicator of what the economy is doing.&nbsp; Don&#039;t try to *predict* where the economy is going by looking at serial numbers....&nbsp; <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie11" alt=":rolleyes:" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in