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Re:The QT Timebomb by AnimalMuppet on Thursday January 20, 2022 @12:05AM (#30004898)
> The US Government has the right to print USD. The notion that they could someday be unable to pay USD-denominated debts is therefore obviously wrong.

That turns into a hyperinflation, though - where you print the money to pay the interest on the debt, but that creates more inflation, so interest rates go up, so you have to print more money, which creates more inflation...

The end of that process is often a total loss of confidence in the government. That in turn often leads to a change of the form of government - usually not for the better.

Re:The QT Timebomb by astrange on Thursday January 20, 2022 @01:07AM (#30005359)
Hyperinflation happens when you print USD to pay non-USD-denominated debt, because you'd have to print an infinite amount. The interest rate describes how much you have to print to pay USD debt, and it's consistently not been much (or even a negative amount) for decades.

> That in turn often leads to a change of the form of government - usually not for the better.

If this is a veiled reference to Nazi Germany, that was not Weimar inflation, it was caused by deflation later. Why hard money people are terrified of hyperinflation instead of deflation, when that's worse, I don't know.

An example of a country that does everything wrong economically and has constant inflation is Argentina, but oddly it's still there and nobody seems to be overthrowing it.

Re:The QT Timebomb by jtc331 on Thursday January 20, 2022 @06:56AM (#30007760)
> Hyperinflation happens when you print USD to pay non-USD-denominated debt, because you'd have to print an infinite amount.

Why is hyperinflation limited to that single scenario?

Re:The QT Timebomb by astrange on Friday January 21, 2022 @12:02AM (#30019375)
It's not the only way to get there, but it is the fastest way, and an important difference between large and small countries is the US doesn't have this problem.