[s1artibartfast]

Your link supports the claim instead of debunking it. Off course they don’t physically print cash, but they increase the account balances.

The Fed adds to (or subtracts from) the amount of money in the economy by buying (or selling) U.S. Treasury securities and other financial instruments. This is referred to as “open market operations,” since these transactions take place in the open market. (The Fed isn’t allowed to buy securities directly from the U.S. Treasury.)

The Fed pays for those securities by crediting funds to the reserves that banks are required to hold, either cash in their vaults or deposits at a Reserve bank.

“So, in that sense, we can think of ‘printing money’ as adding reserves to the banking system,” said David Wheelock, vice president and deputy director of research.

[chrisseaton]

> Your link supports the claim instead of debunking it.

The claim was that they "printed" money. They didn't!

[jnwatson]

It is a euphemism.

[imtringued]

Yes, but a euphemism for what? Increase money supply without increasing the balance sheet of the Fed? Increase money supply by increasing the balance sheet of the Fed. These two might sound similar but they are worlds apart. One of them matches the physical process of printing money and the other one doesn't. Yet somehow in this HN submission "printing money" suddenly became a euphemism for both at the same time and the authors of the comments using the euphemism simply change the meaning to something convenient after the fact.