[freedomben]

Not sure why this is being downvoted. You are correct. I suspect the downvotes are because people don't read carefully and assume you are endorsing it, despite the fact that nowhere did you say it was good or ok, simply that they can.

There have already been indications that the US intends to print their way out of debt. We have already printed billions over the past few years. If you look at graphs and charts of inflation, it's breathtaking.

[0th_Place]

Your last paragraph is very misleading. While it's true that the US has printed billions of dollars in the last few years, that is not all that significant when you consider that we have trillions in circulation. Also, our inflation rate is far from breathtaking, and has been consistently hovering around 2% a year for decades (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10YIE)

[freedomben]

I'm not generally a "don't trust the government numbers" kind of person, but in the case of inflation their numbers are wrong. They don't capture true cost of living changes and the reduction in purchasing power.

This article gets at some of the things I had in mind when I wrote my comment: https://www.investopedia.com/insights/how-will-fed-reduce-ba...

Also I apologize for lack of coherence. I'm very tired and should have gone to sleep 6 hours ago.

Side note: I really like your user name :-)

[0th_Place]

The Bloomberg article you linked in reply to another comment about the mis-measurement of CPI was very interesting, but even the alternative measurements discussed in that article estimated inflation to be below 3%.

The Investopedia article discusses how the Fed will reduce their balance sheet, which is actually more or less the opposite of printing money. During the Great Recession, the Fed bought a lot of financial assets (i.e other people's debt) in order to restore faith in the economy and prevent a complete meltdown. Now, they have to decide whether to sell these assets or hold them to their maturity. Regardless of what they choose, they will be receiving cash either in the form of the sale price or dividends.

The Federal Reserve has a mandate to keep inflation rates low, and they generally do a very good job at that. That doesn't mean we shouldn't worry about our national debt, but I wouldn't be too worried about hyperinflation now or in the near future.

[OscarCunningham]

> If you look at graphs and charts of inflation, it's breathtaking.

I don't see what you're seeing. Inflation has been close to (the Fed's target of) 2% for the last 10 years. That's much lower than its historical values. So if anything the US has chosen less inflation in recent times.

[freedomben]

If the 2% is accurate (which I don't believe it to be. There's no shortage of people much more educated and informed than I that are talking about this), then it's certainly not "breathtaking" as I said. I had in mind a graph (which I inconveniently cannot find now) that showed inflation over the last 100 years prior to the US coming off the gold standard. There was basically none, but it has since sky rocketed.

I did a quick google and found this right at the top: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-02/the-consu...

[OscarCunningham]

> inflation over the last 100 years prior to the US coming off the gold standard. There was basically none, but it has since sky rocketed.

Sure, but I don't think that the high inflation between 1934 and 1976 can be used to judge the current system with an independent central bank and an explicit 2% inflation target.

> I did a quick google and found this right at the top: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-02/the-consu...

The proposed measure merely claims to be faster to respond to changes in prices. Note how the new measure is lower than CPI during the crisis, but higher elsewhere. In the long term they should be the same. So I don't think that this suggests that inflation is being systematically underestimated.

[srtjstjsj]

There's no debate about the obvious fact that intentionally inflationary currency has less inflation than intentionally deflationary currency. The debate is whether the inflationary currency generates more economic growth than deflationary currency (by stimulating productivity in otherwise idle labor/capital), and most economic policymakers believe it does.