Trump: U.S. will never default 'because you print the money'

in his own words, drumpf admitted he went bankrupt 4 times because he couldn't manage debt correctly

his big campaign promise is to build a $27 billion dollar wall that will require billions in annual maintenance (no, mexico is not paying for it) and to build up a military that already spends more than the next 15 nations combined

anyone who wants to put him in control of our economy is frightfully ignorant and if his statements in this thread don't make you seriously doubt his ability to manage this economy you are just stubbornly supporting him out of embarrasment

wake up !!!!!!!!!!!!

a reply to: Liquesence
sure you can,right now the government could print 18 trillion dollars and pay off all the debts as long as they didn`t tell anyone about it beforehand.the people holding the debt aren`t going to ask where the money came from.
if after they paid the debt off word got out that the government just printed 18 trillion dollars with nothing to back it then they could cause a problem with the economy but at that point it wouldn`t matter much because the debt holders accepted the money and wiped the debt clean.
That would be great if we could balance the budget because then we wouldn`t need to borrow anymore money and it`s not likely that anyone would lend us money after pulling a stunt like that.

a reply to: Tardacus

You obviously have no idea how the macro economy functions. You cannot just double, triple or quadruple (depending on what metric you are using) the money supply without having serious and long term inflation.

originally posted by: peck420

originally posted by: ScepticScot
The dollar isn't backed at the moment. Neither is any other countries currencies. Doesn't stop them having value.

The dollar is most certainly backed by 'something'. It is backed by the wealth of the nation. Resource wealth, human wealth, even ideological and cultural wealth.

If it was backed by nothing, we wouldn't know what debt is, as we would never have had it. We would have simply printed more money.

You appear to be contradicting yourself. You said earlier about printing dollars with no backing. You are now saying it is backed by the wealth of the nation.
You are closer the second time but still not 100% correct. It is not backed by the wealth of a nation but it does get its value ( or at least it's external value) from the US economy. Foreign entities own US dollars or debt because they want now or in the future to be able to buy things from the US.
Paying the deficit (inclusive of debt repayments) by new money would only devalue the currency if (both internally and externally) if the increase in the money supply generated increased demand that the US economy was unable to expand to meet.
It is also worth noting that base money (goverment issued money) is only part of the overall money supply. There is not a direct relationship between new money issued and total money supply. In fact changing bonds to dollars need not have any affect on broader measures at all as the government is simply substituteing one financial asset for another.

what? thats exactly whats been going on since since the crash of 08!

only difference is that the ecb, boj, and chinese central bank have joined in.

its a race to the bottom 😱

This is a big mess. Just printing more money, in whatever form, is not going to solve it. Donald Trump says all sorts of things in public that can't stand up to scrutiny. The only way out of the current mess is to renegotiate America's debt, which is a euphemism for bankruptcy in some form.

This is real trouble and much as the Donald would like to blame China and Japan or Mexican illegals for this problem, it is a problem made in America by Americans.

This is the real price of excessive military spending, military adventurism and tax avoidance and evasion.

A ton of debt is going to have to be wiped off the books and the majority of that debt (55%) is not held by China or Japan. It is held by American institutions and individual Americans.

a reply to: ipsedixit

But why do you think it is a big mess? Every single argument for or against paying back the debt by any means starts with the assumption that the debt is in its self a problem.
Government debt is private sector savings. The affect it has on the economy is distributive (generally upwards) not aggregate. As there are already a wide range measures available (if not often used) to government to distribute wealth back the other way it is really a non issue.
That is not to say that issuing the debt is a good thing, but rather it is a pretty pointless accounting measure (a hang over from gold standard days) that has little real relavence to the actual economy.

a reply to: ScepticScot

At some point, and we are not far from that point, store keepers everywhere, when dealing with America, are going to be asked to hand over their goods for a price to be determined later, by America. What way is there around that and what happens then?

a reply to: ipsedixit

Not sure I follow what you mean. could you explain thanks?

originally posted by: ipsedixit
A ton of debt is going to have to be wiped off the books and the majority of that debt (55%) is not held by China or Japan. It is held by American institutions and individual Americans.

More than that. 34% of US debt is held by foreign nations, about half of that is by China and Japan. The remaining 2/3 of the debt is held domestically, either by American investors or in the form of money various branches of government owe to each other.

originally posted by: Aazadan
More than that. 34% of US debt is held by foreign nations, about half of that is by China and Japan.

As of this past April China owned $1.2 trillion and Japan $1.1 trillion which is about 1/3 of the $6.175 trillion foreign debt.

Source

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

Then it's down from the estimates I used for that post (which were from 2014), I figured the percentages wouldn't change all that much.

The main point though was that the vast majority of debt is not held by foreign nations but rather by us.

a reply to: ScepticScot

The Chinese have already said that they don't see why they should be funding America's lavish lifestyle. Who is going to make deals with America, if America can't pay it's bills?

Debt is an issue, believe me. People want to be paid, and not in "funny money". American money is beginning to be viewed as funny money around the world because of the huge amount of quantitative easing that has gone on. Donald Trump has accused China of currency manipulation but the biggest currency manipulator in the world is the United States.

People are starting to want to be paid in gold or in some other currency. If that trend continues, America will then have to buy foreign currency.

You don't see these things as a problem?

originally posted by: ipsedixit
People are starting to want to be paid in gold or in some other currency.

There is not enough gold to pay even a fraction of all the debts owed internationally.

Yeah, ill bet if trump supporters banned together with Mexican gangs and rioted inciting violence and stopping freedom of speech then we probably would have never heard the end of it.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

At the current artificially depressed valuation of gold.

This is another example of manipulation. At some point, the rest of the world will have enough leverage to say,

"Sorry folks, the jig is up. We don't need you any more."

a reply to: ipsedixit

Theere is no way the US can't pay its bills, the bar lls are paid in dollars. China (nor anyone elses) doesn't having any option in terms of settlement, the debt gets paid in dollars.

The worst China can do is stop buying US debt. In other words stop dong the very thing you seem to think is the problem.

originally posted by: ipsedixit
At the current artificially depressed valuation of gold.

The gold market operates as a supply and demand, particularly with the amount of it being used for manufacturing. You cannot artificially depress the gold market unless you control all production and their are far too many independent outfits mining gold.

a reply to: ScepticScot

There are real transactions behind all of this and many real world ramifications of debt problems. If you don't think that, we'll just have to agree to disagree on it.

a reply to: ipsedixit

I would absolutely agree that it is the real world transactions that are important. My point is that the debt itself does not have to have any adverse consequences for those transactions (in fact often quite the opposite).
That is not to say government policies relating to the debt don't ever have adverse consequences, but that is generally a result of fundamental misunderstanding of what the debt actually is.