It’s too bad that most people don’t appreciate the significance of the national debt. In view of the visualization that simply illustrates the HUGE number of dollars, let me repeat my essential points here:

1. Governments always had the right to mint their coins and print their notes
2. In 1694, the Bank of England was established to lend the then King the first national debt at 8%; why was the King so naive, one has to ask
3. Banks have gradually virtually replaced the interest-free money of governments (Cash) by interest-bearing Credit
4. the national debt will never be paid back; but interest payments come in regularly to those who know about the issuance of national debt bonds and can afford to buy them
5. by continuously increasing the need to pay more and more interest, the economy acquires an artificial pace and speed
6. it is effectively a deep betrayal of the taxpayer who is made to believe that his taxes are the income of the state, when, in fact,

• taxes are only a share of the income of the State
• borrowing is the other source of income that could be entirely be replaced by governments printing their own money.

The argument that ‘printing money’ means creating ‘inflation’, is not accurate, since there are two kinds of inflation to consider:

1. price inflation
2. monetary inflation, i.e. the increase of the money supply.

The wise way would be to reduce the share of Credit in the money supply and to watch the Cash : Credit ratio go towards 50/50, as it was before WWII.

Here’s the visualisation of the US National Debt.

Filed under: Central Banks | Tagged: Bank of England, Economic, Finance, Government, government debt, Tax, United States, United States public debt | 5 Comments »