Q for you nostr:npub1a2cww4kn9wqte4ry70vyfwqyqvpswksna27rtxd8vty6c74era8sdcw83a if I may.
Reading your excellent book, Broken Money.
Central Banks hold their own country's debt as their assets. Why can't a government just issue more currency without the charade of a separate entity holding debt everyone know they will never repay?
Because the system is one of “debt monetization”. The money *is* debt. I think lol. Every transaction has two sides. For every asset there has to be a liability.
So if the gov drums up all those dollars (liabilities), someone has to have an asset to match those dollars on a balance sheet.
Plus I don’t think we pay off the national debt with currency.. ? Assuming you’re referring to paper dollars ? Those are commercial bank liabilities. They’re tied to an asset in the bank balance sheet.
Gov debt would be “paid off” via a digital ledger, a digital dollar.
Plus there’s the role that USTs play in the global money system post-2008. They’re the safest and most liquid vehicles for global players like dealer banks to have and hold. Yellen keeps issuing USTs and there’s a market still for them because of the utility USTs have globally.
