There are Hobbyists and Providers on this board who have a sophisticated understqanding of money and the mechanics of high-end finance. I do not. Please chime in on what follow3s.
****************************** *********************
What Is Money?
In the past twenty years have seen a major increase in the amount of money owed by the US government as the national debt. In the 1990s it looked as hough the national debt, much smaller then than it is now, might in fact be retired in the near future. But that was not to be. A trillion at a time, over the next three presidential administrations, the national debt has grown to over 27 trillion dollars. While twenty-seven is not a large number, a trillion is a thousand billions. Each trillion is a very large number.
Borrowing from foreign creditors has played a major roll in this growth of debt, but during, or following, the economic collapse of 2008 another method was invented, "Qualitative Easing". My understanding of QE is that the US Treasury issues bonds and the Federal Reserve buys them with money issued by the "Fed". This seems to be just a bookkeeping transaction, but the money did find its way into the stock markets. All indexes have exploded into historically unheard of highs.
So, where does this money come from? I am financially naïve: It appears to me to have been invented from nothing. What makes it money? How does the Treasury Department know it is actually getting money?
History is replete with examples of nations and kingdoms debasing the value of their money prior to a collapse. A recurring theme of good government has been strong efforts to fight counterfeiting. Why is that? The theory as I understand it is that counterfeiting inflates the supply of money in public hands and actually lowers the value of the currency. this drives prices of commodities up. Runaway inflation is devastation to any society.
So the Fed doesn't even print money, they just say they have given it to the Treasury Department. What is to keep someone much smarter than me from doing a similar thing? Why can't someone work out a scheme (illegal of course) with a mythical Prince-Of-Nigeria to make a wire transfer of money from the national bank of Nigeria . . .or Swaziland . . .to an account here in the USA? How would a bank here know if it is REAL money?