• Got_Bent@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I’ve always kinda felt that a Venezuelan/Zimbabwean type currency crash has always been the end goal when it comes to US debt.

    Borrow more money than exists many times over.

    Spend the money

    Devalue the underlying currency of the debt to effectively zero

    Fuck over millions upon millions of people

    But hey, the spending was, in the end, all free!

    • WhatsThePoint@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Every central bank system is a perpetual debt machine. It’s why the founding fathers specifically fought against them being established here. If you print the money then loan it to a government, how does the government pay that interest? Central bank loans the government $100 at 1% interest, even if they spend none of it, how do they pay the 1% when the issuer of the currency is also the loaner? Governments have to continue to accumulate debt in this system. They have always been a perpetual and compounding debt system.

      • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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        7 months ago

        The founding fathers also kept slaves and didn’t let women vote. I’m tired of how Americans deify them, I suggest citing economists as authorities on economics instead of 18th century wealthy landowners.

        • WhatsThePoint@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          I’m not deifying them by mentioning something they got right. I’m tired of people’s all or nothing lack of nuance. Humanity would be nowhere without the advancements of flawed people from the past. We can’t use our measuring stick on their lives without a huge degree of hypocrisy considering how much society has changed even in the last half century. For all their short comings, the founding fathers did create the frame work that most modern democracies are built on and ushered humanity away from monarchy.

          • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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            7 months ago

            Most modern democracies are parliamentary, actually. The US system has not been widely mimicked aside from cherry-picking a few specific details.

            Also, monarchy and democracy are not mutually exclusive. I’m Canadian, for example, which is a democratic constitutional monarchy. We still have a king but we elect our government.

            • scoobford@lemmy.zip
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              7 months ago

              Yes, but your king is basically a mascot. If they had any actual power, your system would be less democratic basically by definition.

              • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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                7 months ago

                Sure, but that’s adding quibbles beyond the scope of what I was responding to. We’re a democracy and we still have a monarch.

        • catloaf@lemm.ee
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          7 months ago

          They were the economists of their time. Basic economic theory hasn’t changed in millennia, only opinion on how to manage economies has.

          • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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            7 months ago

            There were economists in the 18th century and none of the founding fathers were one.

            The closest was probably Alexander Hamilton, who ended up as the first treasury secretary. Where he proposed and set up the very central bank that the commenter I was responding to is complaining about.

      • treadful@lemmy.zip
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        7 months ago

        Central bank loans the government $100 at 1% interest, even if they spend none of it, how do they pay the 1% when the issuer of the currency is also the loaner?

        Taxes.

        • Wes4Humanity@lemm.ee
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          7 months ago

          Pretty sure they’re saying if we taxes everyone 100%… Collected all the money from everyone in the country, then gave it all back to the central bank we borrowed it from originally, we’d still owe the interest on the debt… With no more money in the system where would we get the “taxes”?

          • treadful@lemmy.zip
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            7 months ago

            As with most debt, it can’t be paid off immediately or it wouldn’t have been debt to being with. It’s a bet on the future.

    • CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      I dont think they’ve had that kind of foresight tbh. The goal is to make lots of money and kick the can of being fiscally responsible down the road to the next administration.

      If a global USD is devalued that far, its not just bad for America.

    • Immersive_Matthew@sh.itjust.works
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      7 months ago

      Worst part is, we all participate so we are the enabler. There are alternatives but people have mostly rejected as media told them it is bad.

      • Got_Bent@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I mean, I was more looking for examples of currencies that had crashed to near zero than the specific driving forces behind the illustrations, but ok.