Thread by @sdgrumbine

QE is absolutely NOT printing money. It is swapping forms of debt. To quote @wbmosler, "it is effectively a tax" .

The Federal Reserve is not just randomly "printing money". That is literally NOT how it works.

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The Federal Reserve is a score keeper and they manage interest rates. They manage private indebtedness. They manage bank lending and clearing payments. They are not Willy Nilly printing money. That is called monetary policy.

When you are talking new money creation in the form of net financial assets, not loans, you are talking fiscal policy and ONLY Congress can authorize that. That means new money creation out into our economy through government spending.

They don't commission the "printing of cash" so it can sit in a bank waiting to be borrowed. They issue instructions to the Fed who then creates deposits into the Treasury's accounts where it is then "spent into existence" and it never has to be paid back EVER.

The national debt = the net money supply or the sum total of every untaxed government spent dollar in existence today.

I am probably yelling into my pillow or staring at a brick wall trying to make folks understand this... But it is really not that tough.

The dollar is merely a tax credit. It is a unit of account. Like an inch or a pound. You measure debt in US Dollars by measuring tax liabilities in US dollars or whatever your nations unit of account is.

Make sense?