Live data from Hacker News

Printing Money: The Absolute Privilege of U.S. Dollars

imgracehuang.medium.com

41–50 of 54 posts

Re: Printing Money: The Absolute Privilege of U.S. Dollars

#41

"It is unavoidable that one day in the far far future, the U.S. loses reserved currency status. " There are some opposing opinions on this being far far away. Recently the USD has lost a significant amount in global percentage mainly due to all the sanction the US imposes. The US treasury itself warned that these sanctions are bad for thr US. [1] [1] https://www.livemint.com/news/world/yellen-says-sanctions-ma...

Also by the time US loses its privileged position it will already be too late to reinvest elsewhere without losses. So many funds are already moving money to China and elsewhere. Having said that China etc have their own economic and demographic problems so nowhere seems safe at the moment.

"So many funds are already moving money to China"

No they aren't.

Re: Printing Money: The Absolute Privilege of U.S. Dollars

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just about stability (and rmb is basically pegged to dollar anyway) - you also need to run a deficit and that’s not something China is willing or able to do for foreseeable future

> you also need to run a deficit Why is this needed?

> > you also need to run a deficit

> Why is this needed?

At a guess...being the worlds reserve currency creates demand for your currency which drives it's price up. This is bad in general because it means your exports become more expensive. The way you deal with that is to create debt to export in the form of US treasuries, which foreigners can then buy. One way to create treasuries is to create a public deficit (not strictly necessarily, you could raise money even with a surplus and then invest it)

Re: Printing Money: The Absolute Privilege of U.S. Dollars

#43

I’ve been thinking about an “equity only” currency where charging interest and debt are outlawed. If you need to raise money for a project, to buy a property, or to finance a business, you must sell a portion of your venture/asset to raise the necessary capital. The idea is to outlaw debt and money creating more money via interest. I don’t see why this system can’t be as efficient as a debt and interest based financi…

[deleted]

Re: Printing Money: The Absolute Privilege of U.S. Dollars

#44
This article has some significant misunderstandings about how these things actually are. The only potential reason would be to mislead the reader because it surely does not educate when a significant portion of what's said is wrong in a way that a layperson wouldn't be able to tell.

Specifically, it acts as if this is business as usual when it is not. The debt to GDP, and inflation rates, are not correct. It makes no mention of the requirements imposed by Basel III which is what banks are being held to now.

There is no deposit requirements anymore. In 2020, they set this to 0 and haven't returned it. Boys and girls we no longer have a fractional banking system. Let that sink in for a moment.

Everything we know historically about banking and economic trends is largely based upon the banking system being a fractional banking system. You can't have a non-fractional banking system and claim its the same, or will operate remotely similar. Its unprecedented and was barely announced if you didn't follow all the metrics available through their site.

As they've redone their site again to hide stuff, here is the link for those that want to check it out themselves.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/reservereq.htm

Basel III sets up capital requirements but allows stock market capitalization to be counted against those requirements. Making any bank very susceptible to market attacks, synthetic shares can be indirectly created using the market maker as a patsy; just like commodities can be suppressed with net0 options contracts between colluding parties.

Worse, the banks have centralized to the point where if any of the big primary banks now fails, none of the others have the assets to take it over. Which means the next step is nationalization, or inflate the currency even more than is happening currently (as a bail-in).

Banks and other financial organizations don't have to disclose changes in the underlying assets (bonds specifically) when they intend to hold them to maturity. You've got funds holding 90%+ of 1.8% bonds whose value is significantly lower than actual market value (because interest rates went up how many times?). Value is worth approximately 1/3 when I last calculated, but the going market rate is well above that. For those that don't know, its the sum of all interest payments and principal discounting inflation above 2% up to present date as calculated in 1984, and adjusting for the difference of the current interest rate bond compared to the 1.8).

Not only that, it mistakes what really happened with Gamestop (a short squeeze, and market weighted index rebalancing) or the M2 triggered liquidity issues (in 2019) that prompted payouts to the general public amid the pandemic because the banks weren't lending due to liquidity.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V

I seriously don't see much that is actually accurate in that post. Even the market growth part is misleading.

If you want a solid background on how these things work, read David Graeber ("Debt, The first 5,000 years") followed by the Economic calculation problem (essays). You run into the latter in non-market and market systems that deviate sufficiently from rational pricing.

Debt to GDP is well above 300% when you count all outstanding liabilities, the measure he references is what the government publishes but if you look at how they've changed that formula over time you'd see its just like inflation. Less about accuracy more about promoting a narrative.

Re: Printing Money: The Absolute Privilege of U.S. Dollars

#45

Do you really trust China to manage the World’s currency? Scenario: Monday: China buys 100 billion Yuan of oil from Saudi Arabia. Tuesday; China prints 100 billion more Yuan. Oops! The only countries that the World mistrusts more than the U.S. … is everybody else.

> Do you really trust China to manage the World's currency?

No, they have terminal credibility issues when it comes to how they handle things, and its real hard to support something like that when you have no laws protecting foreign investors.

Netflix's The China Hustle was a great documentary providing visibility on these issues. A world currency is a foreign investment in any country that accepts and denominates in that currency.

Re: Printing Money: The Absolute Privilege of U.S. Dollars

#46
post #31

Do you really trust China to manage the World’s currency? Scenario: Monday: China buys 100 billion Yuan of oil from Saudi Arabia. Tuesday; China prints 100 billion more Yuan. Oops! The only countries that the World mistrusts more than the U.S. … is everybody else.

You can't print bitcoin. You can't print natural resources. You can't print manufacturing capabilities. Trade will work on verifiable assets in the future. If Bircoin picks up even a small percentage of foreign exchange it will be worth orders of magnitude more than it is now. A block chain with international trust is a valuable invention.

Trust is a fickle thing, and requires credibility.

Re: Printing Money: The Absolute Privilege of U.S. Dollars

#47

I’ve been thinking about an “equity only” currency where charging interest and debt are outlawed. If you need to raise money for a project, to buy a property, or to finance a business, you must sell a portion of your venture/asset to raise the necessary capital. The idea is to outlaw debt and money creating more money via interest. I don’t see why this system can’t be as efficient as a debt and interest based financi…

This was done in the past. Money lending (usury) was outlawed.

For 100+ years, interest above a certain percentage was outlawed until congress created a exclusion loophole for federal financial institutions.

If you haven't already read the book "Debt, The First 5,000 yaers" by David Graeber, I think you'd get a lot out of it.

Also, Market system's aren't a silver bullet.

Re: Printing Money: The Absolute Privilege of U.S. Dollars

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also by the time US loses its privileged position it will already be too late to reinvest elsewhere without losses. So many funds are already moving money to China and elsewhere. Having said that China etc have their own economic and demographic problems so nowhere seems safe at the moment.

> So many funds are already moving money to China and elsewhere. Good luck to those investors. China has no established tradition of respecting property rights. It can change the rules of the game as it sees fit politically. The only way to make it workable is to have some critical trading relationship that makes the cost of seizing property/money unpalatable.

[flagged]

Re: Printing Money: The Absolute Privilege of U.S. Dollars

#49

I’ve been thinking about an “equity only” currency where charging interest and debt are outlawed. If you need to raise money for a project, to buy a property, or to finance a business, you must sell a portion of your venture/asset to raise the necessary capital. The idea is to outlaw debt and money creating more money via interest. I don’t see why this system can’t be as efficient as a debt and interest based financi…

So no credit cards for businesses or their employees ? What about unpaid invoices to other businesses , do they get converted to debt or equity ?

There is no more debt or credit. Unpaid invoices are defaults where the violating party has their shares liquidated as a margin call to cover their bill. Businesses would be much more conservative about having currency to cover their bills, which would end the boom/bust/repossess economic cycles.

Digitizing ownership solves all of the “problems” with not having “credit”. Raising capital would be a simple as selling tokens on decentralized exchanges for the hard currency unit of account. Accounts payable are smart contracts due at a specific date/time.

You would have to completely reform the SEC for this to work. They would need to get out of the way for the most part (no more red tape and accredited investor nonsense) and only handle edge cases that can’t be automated.

Central banks would no longer exist to profit from issuing credit to nations. Taxation would have to be transparent and politicians accountable, because there is no more money printer.

Re: Printing Money: The Absolute Privilege of U.S. Dollars

#50
post #47

I’ve been thinking about an “equity only” currency where charging interest and debt are outlawed. If you need to raise money for a project, to buy a property, or to finance a business, you must sell a portion of your venture/asset to raise the necessary capital. The idea is to outlaw debt and money creating more money via interest. I don’t see why this system can’t be as efficient as a debt and interest based financi…

This was done in the past. Money lending (usury) was outlawed. For 100+ years, interest above a certain percentage was outlawed until congress created a exclusion loophole for federal financial institutions. If you haven't already read the book "Debt, The First 5,000 yaers" by David Graeber, I think you'd get a lot out of it. Also, Market system's aren't a silver bullet.

I’m not talking about outlawing usury by fiat, more the automation and extension of equity markets into the general economy using smart contracts for ar/ap using margin calls for unpaid bills and a pre-defined money supply currency as the unit of account. Credit at interest would not be supported and would be unnecessary.
Post reply on HN