> Eh, it's not "real" money

Why not? It was real to the tax payers who paid it to the government and real to the Corinthian employees who were paid by the school and it will be real to the students as they struggle to pay it back over many years.

If something is "real", you can't have less than zero.

(For some definitions of " real".)

Right now, the consequences of forgiving a billion dollars of student debt are immeasurable. It's a small amount to spread over so many people, and ultra easy/cheap borrowing by the federal government can delay the consequences for a long time.

This is really all I meant. Everybody wants to get all philosophical, when I was only referring to how our political system works.

Because the Fed can add and remove dollars from the economy at will. See: Quantitive Easing with mortgage-backed bonds.

Is any money real money, by that logic?

Technically no. Money is only real if 2 or more people believe it to be so.

Think about it. We exchange dollars, euros, bits, whatever all day long. Do you ever stop to think, "Why does this hold any value to me?" Its because someone else will accept it in exchange for goods or services.

The Onion, as always, captures this perfectly: http://www.theonion.com/articles/us-economy-grinds-to-halt-a...

Totally agree with you. But that makes grand-grand-grand parent comment "it's not real money" meaningless.

Ok, so we have this common ground of thinking money isn't too real if it can be printed at will by central bankers. That's good.

Now ask yourself: what do central banks hoard? Whatever they hoard must be, at the very least, a more "real" kind of money than the money they print. Do they hoard diamonds? No. Do they hoard platinum? No. Do they hoard fine art? No. Do they hoard expensive wine? No. What do they hoard? Gold. And why do they hoard gold while publicly stating it's a useless and worthless metal? "Tradition", according to Ben Bernanke.

So if you believe our rulers, you can sleep sound in knowing nothing is real money, and the worthless stuff central banks hoard, they're doing it just because it's tradition. All this work of moving this stuff around the globe in armored planes and escorted ships, it's all for tradition, you see.

Does gold truly have that much worth as a value store? Its not a terribly great metal, and I can't see myself buying food with gold anymore than I can see myself using dollars if the economy collapses.

In a nod to Accelerando (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando), the only value store I could see being useful in the future is perhaps reputation.

> Does gold truly have that much worth as a value store?

Why do central banks hoard it?

Two questions, one answer.