Why do governments borrow money instead of printing it?
"Governments borrowing money doesn't create new money. When banks ""borrow"" money (i.e. take deposits), it does effectively create money because the depositor expects to be able to get the money back at any time, but the bank assumes that most won't actually do this and lends out most of the money to other people. If everyone did actually ask for their money back at once, the illusion of the extra money created by this process would collapse, and the bank would go bust. In contrast when governments borrow money, the loan isn't repayable on demand, it has a fixed maturity and the money is only repaid at the end of that period (plus interest at defined points during the period). So holders of government debt don't have money they can spend (they can turn it into money they can spend but only by finding someone else to buy it). So government debt doesn't create inflation in itself. If they printed money, then they'd be devaluing the money of everyone who had saved or invested, whereas if they borrow money and use taxes to repay it, the burden falls more evenly across the economy and doesn't disproportionately penalise certain sets of people." “Why do governments borrow money instead of printing it? (When printing money, one doesn't need to pay interest).”  Good question.  Numerous leading economists, including a couple of economics Nobel Laureates have asked the same question and concluded that borrowing can be dispensed with. First, Milton Freidman set out a monetary system in a paper in the American Economic Review which involved no government borrowing, and govt just printed money (in a responsible fashion of course) as and when needed.  See: http://www.jstor.org/pss/1810624 A second Nobel Laureate with similar views was William Vickrey. A third economist with similar views (of Keynes’ era) was Abba Lerner. Keynes said of Lerner, “Lerner's argument is impeccable, but heaven help anyone who tries to put it across to the plain man at this stage of the evolution of our ideas”. "Yes - Simply put, printing money is called ""monetizing the debt"" and would result in some nasty inflation. It's a no-no as it quickly devalues the currency and makes it far more difficult to borrow in the future, an entire generation will remember getting burned by it. If, say, Canada's currency were suddenly worth half as much and you received half your investment back in US dollars (e.g. you paid US$10,000, but now have US$5000) would you ever trust them again?  The economy is far more complex than one can discuss here, but the fractional reserve system is the next creator of money, although it's not unlimited, the reserve requirement throttles it back. The demand for loans is impacted both by the rate itself and the bank's willingness to lend.  The housing bubble had multiple causes. In a sense Tucson is right. Anything we do to make houses more affordable can cause house price inflation. But - the over the top underwriting had more impact in my opinion. People lost sight of good lending practices. The option rate interest only ARMs were financial time bombs." One important answer is still missing: governments may not be able to do print money because of international agreements. This is in fact a very important reason: it applies to the entire Eurozone.  (I admit that many Eurozone countries also not allowed to borrow as much as they do now, but somehow that's considered a far lesser sin). "If the government prints money recklessly and causes inflation, people will come to expect inflation, and the value of the currency will plummet, and you'll end up like Zimbabwe where a trillion dollars won't buy a loaf of bread.  If the government actually pays people for the money they borrow, they don't have this problem - and as it turns out, the US government can get pretty good rates on borrowing in general, in part because they're extraordinarily good about paying them back. (Also, inflation expectations are low, so people will accept 1-2% interest rates. If you expected inflation of 10%, you'd see people demanding something more like 12% interest rates.) (The downside of too much of this sort of borrowing is that it ""crowds out"" other borrowing, which may harm the economy. Who would lend money to / invest in a small business, if the government is paying good money and there's almost no risk at all?) Now, inflation can come into play afterward, if the Fed decides it needs to maintain ""easy money"" policies to stimulate the economy (because taxes are too high because we're paying off the debt, or because we've crowded out smaller borrowers, or something). -- In general, you can count on the the principle that if you, as the government, try to play too many games with people's money... well, people aren't stupid; they will eventually catch on, and adjust their behavior to compensate, and then you're right back where you started, but with less trust." I believe there are two ways new money is created: My favorite description of this (money creation) comes from Chris Martenson: the video is here on Youtube. And yes, I believe both can create inflation. In fact this is what happened in the US between 2004 and 2007: increasing loans to households to buy houses created an inflation of home prices. The Government doesn't borrow money. It in fact simply prints it. The bond market is used for an advanced way of controlling the demand for this printed money. Think about it logically. Take 2011 for example. The Govt spent $1.7 trillion more than it took in. This is real money that get's credited in to people's bank accounts to purchase real goods and services. Now who purchases the majority of treasuries? The Primary Dealers. What are the Primary Dealers? They are banks. Where do banks get their money? From us.  So now put two and two together. When the Govt spends $1.7 trillion and credits our bank accounts, the banking system has $1.7 trillion more. Then that money flows in to pension funds, gets spent in to corporation who then send that money to China for cheap products... and eventually the money spent purchases up Govt securities for investments. We had to physically give China 1 trillion dollars for them to be able to purchase 1 trillion dollars in securities. So it makes sense if you think about how the math works in the real world. The government could actually do either one to expand the money supply as necessary to keep up with rising productivity / an increased labor supply.  The question is merely political. In the case of the US, printing money involves convincing politicians to spend it.  While we currently run a deficit, there is a large lobby within the US who are incredibly anti-deficit, and are fighting against this for no good reason.  If the money supply were left in their hands, we would end up with a shrinking money supply and rapid deflation. On the other hand, the Fed can simply bypass the politicians, and control the money supply directly by issuing bonds.  It's easier for them, they don't have to explain it to voters (only to economists), and it gives them more direct control without any messy political considerations like which programs to expand or cut. My own simple answer is that it will affect and reduce productivity (e.g. Zimbabwe). it will also cause inflation which mean that no one will want to work for production again. "My answer is that when confronted with the obvious, the most common human reaction is to seek reasons for it, because things have to be right. They have to have a reason. We don't like it when things suck.  So when finding out that you are being ripped off every day of your life, your reaction is ""There must be a logical reason that perfectly explain why this is. After all, the world is fair, governments are working in our best interest and if they do it this way, they must have a very good reason for it."" Sorry, but that not the case. You have the facts. You are just not looking at them. Economics, as a subject, is the proper management of resources and production. Now, forget the fancy theories, the elaborate nonsense about stocks and bonds and currencies and pay attention to the actual situation. On our planet, most people earn $2,000 per year. Clean water is not available for a very sizable percent of the world's population. Admittedly, 90% of the world's wealth is concentrated in the hands of the most wealthy 10%. A Chinese engineer earns a fraction of what a similarly qualified engineer earns in the States. Most people, even in rich countries, have a negative net value. They have mortgages that run for a third of their lifetimes, credit card debts, loans... do the balance. Most people are broke. Does this strike you as the logical result of a fair and balanced economic system?  Does this look like a random happenstance?  The dominant theory is ""It just happened, it's nobody's fault and nobody designed it that way and to think otherwise is very bad because it makes you a conspiracy theorist, and conspiracy theorists are nuts. You are not nuts are you?"" Look at the facts already in your possession. It didn't just happen.  The system is rigged. When a suit typing a few numbers in a computer can make more money in 5 minutes than an average Joe can make in 100 lifetimes of honest, productive work, you don't have a fair economic system, you have a scam machine.  When you look at a system as broken as the one we have, you shouldn't be asking yourself ""what makes this system right?"" What you should be asking yourself is more along the lines of ""Why is it broken? Who benefits? Why did congress turn its monetary policy over to the Federal reserve (a group of unelected and unaccountable individuals with strong ties in the banking industry) and does not even bother to conduct audits to know how your money is actually managed? This brilliant movie, Money as debt, points to a number of outrageous bugs in our economic system. Now, you can dream up reasons why the system should be the way it is and why it is an acceptable system. Or you can look at the fact and realize that there is NO JUSTIFICATION for an economic system that perform as badly as it does.  Back to basics. Money is supposed to represent production. It's in every basic textbook on the subject of economics. So, what should money creation be based on? Debt? No. Gold? No. Randomly printed by the government when they feel like it? No (although this could actually be better than the 2 previous suggestions) Money is supposed to represent production. Index money on production and you have a sound system. Why isn't it done that way? Why do you think that is?"
"Some people believe that inflation is caused by an increase in the money supply when the banks engage in fractional reserve lending. Is this correct? You are referring to the Austrian school of thought. The Austrians define inflation in terms of money supply. In other words, inflation is defined as an increase in the aggregate money supply, even if prices stay the same of fall. This is not the only definition of inflation. The mainstream defines inflation as a general increase in the prices of consumer goods. Based on the first definition, then your supposition is correct by definition. Based on the second definition, you can make a case that money supply affects prices. But keep in mind, it's just one factor affecting prices. Furthermore, economics is resistant to experimentation, so it is difficult to establish causality. Austrian economists tend to approach the problem of ""proof"" using a 2-pronged tactic: establish plausibility by explaining the mechanism, then look for historical evidence to back up that explanation. As I understand it, when there is more available money in the market, the price of goods will increase. But will a normal merchant acknowledge the increase of money supply and raise prices immediately? I posit that, in the short run, merchants won't increase prices in response to increased money supply. So, why does increased money supply lead to price inflation? The simple answer, in the Austrian school of thought, is that you have more money chasing the same amount of goods. In other words, printing money doesn't actually increase the number of widgets made. I believe the Austrian school is consistent with your supposition that prices don't increase in the short run. In other words, producers don't increase prices immediately after observing an increase in the money supply. Specifically, after the banks print more notes, where will the money be distributed first?  The Austrian story goes as follows: Imagine that the first borrower is a home constructor, and he is borrowing freshly ""printed"" money to build new homes. This constructor will need to buy materials and hire labor to build homes, and in doing so he will bid against other home constructors. The increased demand for lumber, nails, tools, carpentry, etc. will ever so slightly increase the market prices for these goods and services. So the money goes first to the borrower, but then flows also to the people selling to the borrower, and the people selling to the sellers, etc. It has a ripple effect. Who will be the first one to have a need to rise their price? These producers won't need to increase their price, but they will choose to do so if the believe that demand outstrips supply. In other words if you have more orders than you can fill, then you may post higher prices because you think consumers will tolerate the higher price.  You might object that competition deters any one producer from unilaterally raising prices, but in fact if all producers are failing to keep up with demand, then you can unilaterally raise prices because other producers don't have any excess inventory to undercut you with." "I'll use similar logic to Dave Ramsey to answer this question because this is a popular question when we're talking about paying off any debt early.  Also, consider this tweet and what it means for student loans - to you, they're debt, to the government, they're assets. If you had no debt at all and enough financial assets to cover the cost, would you borrow money at [interest rate] to obtain a degree?  Put it in the housing way, if you paid off your home, would you pull out an equity loan/line for a purchase when you have enough money in savings?  I can't answer the question for you or anyone else, as you can probably find many people who will see benefits to either. I can tell you two observations I've made about this question (it comes a lot with housing) over time.  First, it tends to come up a lot when stocks are in a bubble to the point where people begin to consider borrowing from 0% interest rate credit cards to buy stocks (or float bills for a while).  How quickly people forget what it feels (and looks like) when you see your financial assets drop 50-60%!  It's not Wall Street that's greedy, it's most average investors.  Second, people asking this question generally overlook the behavior behind the action; as Carnegie said, ""Concentration is the key to wealth"" and concentrating your financial energy on something, instead of throwing it all over the place, can simplify your life.  This is one reason why lottery winners don't keep their winnings: their financial behavior was rotten before winning, and simply getting a lot of money seldom changes behavior.  Even if you get paid a lot or little, that's irrelevant to success because success requires behavior and when you master the behavior everything else (like money, happiness, peace of mind, etc) follows." "People are naturally pessimistic or optimistic. I am a pessimist, I have a anxiety disorder to prove. Tried to have a business, gave up when I realized I would have to borrow more money to keep on going. My dad on the other hand, he is eternal optimist. He was part of the 80es real estate bubble. It just was in his genes to believe that prizes keep on going up. And they might have, but there were factors at play that he could not foresee (falling of soviet union which influenced Finland).   To me, bubbles are born because of 1 simple reason. Government backed loans. If governments would not bail out banks that lend money to speculators. There would not be bubbles. It is that simple. But then the economy would freeze, since banks would demand perfect guarantees before they would loan you a cent.  One way to deal with that might be that central banks would naturally print money at a certain rate each year, knowing that a lot of that money will just burn in bad investments, basically forgiving banks for the bad loans they have made. Not too much to cause inflation, yet not too little to cause banks stop lending.  This money would be simply printed off thin air.   There would have to be a agreement on IMF level at what this ""burn rate"" could be to invidual countries. But since that burn rate could give an edge to a country that was allowed to print more, it would be very hard to come to an agreement how much each country could print.   Or, there could be a international agreement that the money would printed this way only during recessions.   Else we are stuck with bust and boom cycles, which are very destructive as I have witnessed first hand." And so what was the logical alternative?  How does Hank Paulson:  1.   Get $150-300 billion dollars into the hands of individual taxpayers so that they don't default on their home mortgages and wipe out the banking system?  2.  Make sure the $150-300 B is going to individuals who actually need the capital, weren't bad actors in taking on too much debt and causing everyone else significant harm by engaging in risky borrowing?  3.  Sufficiently protect the $150-300 B in loans so that the US Gov't can get paid back and not have it be some massive giveaway of taxpayer dollars?    And all this had to be done within a matter of days.  Ontop of which, why aren't you railing against the irresponsible automakers who didn't pay back their TARP loans and instead were forgiven, while the banks paid back their loans in full with interest and a profit to the US Taxpayer?  The automakers and the unions basically got free money (after Obama came into office and under his direction) on the back of the taxpayer.  Isn't that crony capitalism when unions who are Democratic sympathizing voters get loans that are ultimately forgiven by the federal government?  The whining you make about private entities like Berkshire, who did nothing to create the crisis and merely took advantage of it, with little to no help from the federal government is remarkable.  It's like straight out of a socialist playbook. When you get paid the product already exists. In the case of paper money, it represents a debt, that's correct, but it's debt on the work you already did in making those widgets.  If you were paid in gold that would be a simple barter of merchandise, with no promises attached. You would be exchanging a certain number of widgets for a material that can be used to make jewelry. It depends on what actions the European Central Bank (ECB) takes.  If it prints Euros to bail out the country then your Euros will decline in value.  Same thing with a US state going bankrupt.  If the FED prints dollars to bailout a state it will set a precedent that other states can spend carelessly and the FED will be there to bail them out by printing money. If you own bonds issued by the bankrupting state then you could lose some of your money if the country is not bailed out. We can only print money until we start to see the effect in inflation, true, but we've got quite a way to go before that happens.  Currently, t-bills are paying under .2% interest/year.  Money can be borrowed at a historic low rate.  No one worried about this huge amount of debt when Bush was running it up.  Now that the deficit has actually gotten under control, people are up in arms.    The government has always run a deficit, except once.  Money is a closed loop.  Household savings/spending + business savings/spending + imports/exports + government surplus/deficit = 0.  That's an accounting identity.  Currently, households are spending a bit, businesses are saving like nobodies business, and we export more than we import.  We have to run a deficit to have an economy. It's called carry-trade. They can borrow from governments that have 0% int rates, exchange it for dollars, and then buy u.s. treasuries. Japan would never ever raise their interest rates as their economy runs on keynesian fumes.