[jsjohnst]

No wonder you are hiding behind a throwaway, as you clearly don’t know what you’re talking about and are just posting mindless drivel. If you want to know the outcome of “we can always make more money” attitudes, look no further than Zimbabwe. In ~2007 they had a 50 cent paper note. ~6 months later a common paper note was $10,000,000,000. Just a short while after that, paper notes were being printed in one hundred trillion dollar increments. What could you buy with that $100T note? Basically not even something from a vending machine (aka worth less than 1 USD in value).

Source: I have all the above paper notes from Zimbabwe and have read about the economic policies that led to the collapse of the currency.

[std_throwaway]

Zimbabwe did not run out of money.

I did not say that a bank can make everybody rich by printing money just that there is no limit to the money that the banks can print, as is evidenced by Zimbabwe. They ran out of everything else but not money. We are basically expressing the same thing from different viewpoints.

[AnimalMuppet]

If Zimbabwe is your example that shows that you're correct, it also shows that your point is completely irrelevant in the real world. So they didn't run out of money. That did them no good whatsoever.

[jsjohnst]

> Zimbabwe did not run out of money

Actually, wrong again. They did run out of “money” and tried to mask that by continuing to print currency. “Currency” is a physical thing, it’s essentially a promissory note. “Money” is an intangible thing, essentially a stored value. Currency that is worth nothing isn’t “money” as the promise printed on it has no stored value.

Further reading:

http://www.differencebetween.info/difference-between-money-a...

[chatmasta]

Zimbabwe doesn’t have the US military backing its debt.

[rb808]

So if the economy gets bad its the job of the US military to invade something to get their resources?

[blotter_paper]

If the US really ran out of resources, I wouldn't count it out. In the mean time, it's more like we prop up dictators who agree to sell oil exclusively in our currency (see Saudi Arabia) and invade every country small enough to push around that tries to sell oil in anything but US dollars (see Saddam being in talks with France, or Gaddafi planning to sell oil in the gold dinar). Since the whole world has to buy oil, the whole world has to have dollars. Then we print more US dollars, devaluing the existing US dollars in global circulation and effectively stealing wealth from the rest of the world for the benefit of our banking system. Yeah, we also give sweet contracts to Haliburton so that they can pillage third-world oil fields in the middle of our wars and there is some immediate benefit from that as well, but I'm betting that propping up the petrodollar is the most important way that we're leveraging the military for economic ends.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Yes. It's like clockwork. The US is coming due for another war soon.

[AnimalMuppet]

Sure. That's why we kept Grenada's beaches, and Kosovo's industry, and Iraq's oil.

Oh, wait...

[WillPostForFood]

To suggest that the American foreign interventions have been positive for the economy is crazy. Neither left nor right believe that lunacy.

[chatmasta]

Sure. But ultimately, debt is meaningless unless collected. In a scenario of global economic collapse, anyone who wants to collect their debt (if it even means anything anymore) from the US would have to go through the US military first.