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by kaputsmack
3171 days ago
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Printed what? When was the last time you moved a trillion printed dollars? "Printing money" today means moving virtual money around. Banks can make money appear in Cayman Islands. "Here is a billion dollar SWIFT money order", that is it. There is no billion printed dollars. They "print" money at will. |
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There are three types of money: central bank reserves, physical currency and commercial bank money. The U.S. government (Fed and Treasury, respectively) directly controls the first two down to the cent. Commercial banks "make" the final one, but to get the right to do that they have to agree to Federal Reserve jurisdiction (internationally, this happens with central banks entering into swap agreements with the Fed, i.e. opening "accounts" with the Fed into which the Fed deposits U.S. dollars whose--since this needs to be said--quantities it gets to track).
If rando Brazilian bank says "I have a billion U.S. dollars" and doesn't tell the Fed, they counterfeited. They can spend it in Brazil if nobody checks (hint: everyone checks, this is what the SWIFT and Fedwire protocols were designed to facilitate). But if they try to wire those funds to anyone else (or any other Fedwire or SWIFT member), the books won't balance and the message will be rejected. Someone will then have to (a) get real dollars to cover their crime or (b) risk having themselves, and/or their central bank, booted from the Fed's international system.