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Comment by 827a | Hacker News Reader

In some ways, this effect can have a positive impact on US citizens; demand for the US dollar requires supply to satisfy the demand. Where does that supply come from? Oftentimes: Printing. The US generally does not make a habit of telling US dollar buyers "no, we don't have any US dollars to sell you", so less demand on the dollar for reserve holdings can have a deflationary impact on its value. This can be combined with lowering interest rates, which creates more domestic demand for dollars, to help balance out the inflationary impacts from that.

Many economists take the stance that being the world's reserve currency is something of a two-edged sword; a curse that does come with geopolitical advantages, but bundles those advantages with significantly more difficult global financial responsibilities.

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It’s either printing or increasing taxation for constant benefits. We all know what happens when the government tries to increase taxes at all, now try doing it for zero increased benefits. This is a populace that’s had candy for dinner since WW2, and forcing them to eat their vegetables will result in a never before seen level of civil unrest from people of all political inclinations.

The Fed most commonly uses Open Market Operations to modify the money supply, with "money printing" or Quantitative Easing used in more emergency situations.

But more broadly your comment doesn't really represent reality, whatever happens in the markets and economy the Fed manages inflation (or deflation) and it's much more complicated than a single relationship like you describe.

More interesting is trade, where the US consumes so much and pays out so many dollars for goods that places like China which run huge surpluses have few choices other than lend it back to the US.

Sure; and I'm referring directly to those "emergency situations", which aren't much of an "emergency" as most people would understand the word given that they've engaged in QE for ~7 of the past twenty years.

4 of the last 10 were quantitative tightening.

> 7 of the past twenty years

A lot of shit went down over that period.

But you seem upset by QE in general. It seems to upset a lot of people, possibly because the Fed created a lot of money, but that's what central banks do, they create and destroy money. It's really not that much of a big deal. People lose sight of the fact that money is an abstraction and not something concrete.

> money is an abstraction and not something concrete

That is a choice we have made. Historically it hasn’t been that way.

It's always been that way. The notion that currency is backed by something concrete like gold is an illusion, one that some people cling to these days.

Even if it were true, inflation makes the whole issue moot. Money is only worth what it will buy, so it is at the mercy of prices.

Finally money depends on people's collective acceptance of it. No point in holding gold if people lose confidence in gold, for instance if people start producing convincing fakes. How does the average person verify gold? It almost always goes back to trusting some central authority.

What about US debt? If nobody buys USD anymore, suddenly there will be a lot of excess USD.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_tightening

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation

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