About John Pinckney

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Printing Money Without Green Ink or George Washington

When “the Fed” daily injects us with easy money, our news media continues to use that familiar but outdated “printing money” rubric. But these money injections are not done with any green ink, and there are no additional mini-portraits made of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Hamilton, Jackson or Grant.

Instead, our monetary system silently receives a digitally increased global supply of U.S. Dollars, allowing a sort of government sponsored “Bitcoin virus” to provide borrowers, including banks, with loans at lower interest rate. The narcotic effect is people are allowed to live beyond their means and to continue extending their credit and buy more houses, cars and college degrees.

If these injections are to have rational and moral justifications, (i.e., that the narcotic effect is monetarily necessary only in the short-term and that it is not addictive), then there must be an implied understanding that the Fed will reverse the process by digitally decreasing the global supply of money when people should not continue extending their credit.

Additional injections are NOT justified in the following cases:

1) People have already borrowed beyond their ability to repay.
2) Full recovery has begun such that “printing” new money would only cause harmful inflation.

I think the injections need to stop sooner rather than later. What about you?