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Comment by sumanthvepa | Hacker News Reader

This is a bit of a misconception. The US need never formally default on its dollar obligations, as it can simply print dollars. It will never be in formal default, although, it would effectively have defaulted by inflating its debt away. The consequence for the US economy won't be pretty though.

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> The US need never formally default on its dollar obligations, as it can simply print dollars

The assertion was that bond holders would hate for the value of the maturation currency to fall. This is true, regardless of the currency origin.

Beyond that, printing more dollars or defaults, would influence USD value to some degree, but would not guarantee a decline in overall attractiveness.

One of the pillars of US hegemony is OPEC appointing USD as the preferred trading currency, over the last 50 years. Another is the industrial capability that the US exercised in WW2. It demonstrated that the US is capable of incomparable mobilization, growth of production and innovation, when properly motivated.

>It demonstrated that the US is capable of incomparable mobilization, growth of production and innovation, when properly motivated.

B.effing.S.

What hyperbole and hubris.

This is American exceptionalism at its "shining" worst. The incredible stupidity of that statement (to use superlatives like incomparable, as you did) would be hard to believe among rational people, if not already seen in writing, as above...

That capability you talk of, could apply to any country, when ”properly motivated".

Example: India. 1947.

Removed the British as the colonizer, non-violently, except for maybe sporadic incidents, and the 1857 rebellion.

Motivations and results in the same ball park as your example, as regards mobilization (of the population to drive out the British).

See:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_empire

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi

Production and innovation not relevant in this case, except maybe innovation of overthrowing an oppressor non-violently.

> That capability you talk of, could apply to any country, when ”properly motivated".

This does not affect the historical narrative. eg I'm sure some other nation could have created an atomic bomb first, but they didn't. Ultimately, regardless of how un/deserved the confidence in the US economy is, the confidence exists and that has been part of the reasoning that the USD is the reserve currency of choice today.

Good luck with whatever.

Jeez. More poor logic, if logic at all.

Rest of the reply coming in a bit.

> as it can simply print dollars. It will never be in formal default (...). The consequence for the US economy won't be pretty though.

Argentina tried doing that, resulting in 100% inflation per month.

That's because, in a blunt sense, no one cares about the Argentinian peso except for (some) Argentinians. Many more people (practically everyone) care about the USD. So long as the US commands dominant global influence (in many senses) then the USD retains a "standard" quality that can be very flexible. Sustained deflation and loss of purchase power is far more dangerous than inflation, so long as you don't slip into hyperinflation. Everyone in Argentina, for instance, just immediately converted their money to USD.

Except Argentine debt is largely in US dollars, so they didnt do that.

The US dollar bit is the problem.

From the perspective of anybody outside the US the US dollar is a bond - a zero percent bearer bond.

Therefore it is nothing more than a bond swap with a change in interest rate and term. The entity “owing” doesn’t change

>Except Argentine debt is largely in US dollars, so they didnt do that.

Exactly, just between a 20 and a 30 percent of our debt is in Argentine pesos. [0]

0: https://www.argentina.gob.ar/economia/finanzas/graficos-deud...

The US can keep printing money, as soon long as the services is offers is purely in USD. The demand cancels out the inflation from printing money by a small margin.

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