With modern technology, it is very tempting for unscrupulous individuals to try their hand at counterfeiting money. Some are quite proficient at it and get away with it for a time. The penalties are severe and after repeated offences, usually jail time is in order. So how much money does one have to counterfeit before it is a serious crime? Apparently if you are the government, you can print as much as $600 billion and nobody will come after you. This is what happened last week.
There is a lack of understanding of history on the part of the US government. Every time excess printing of fiat currency (paper money that is not backed by gold) has been tried, to boost the economy, it has failed monumentally. It was tried in the days of the Roman Empire. More recently, post WWI Germany tried it and suffered from hyperinflation where a wheelbarrow of money was required to purchase a loaf of bread. Even more recently, Argentina, and then only a few years ago, Zimbabwe. It always ends in disaster. One does not have to live very long these days to see that many of our leaders do not know their history, or refuse to learn from its lessons.
2 comments:
But wait....are they telling us that the HST just wasn't enough?
;-)
That is another issue, but the short answer is 'yes'. The insatiable monster must continue to feed. It was born to feed and the bigger it gets the more it needs.
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