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Comment by mrfredward | Hacker News Reader

Printing money to get through a recession vs printing money as the primary way of funding government programs are wildly different things. The mere suggestion that U.S. officials were serious about running a deficit of a large percentage of GDP could send people fleeing U.S. dollar denominated assets, and thanks to the exchange rate effects cause a spike in inflation before the programs even started.

The thing that makes a green piece of cloth valuable is the powerful government and the massive reserve bank behind it. If a dollar bill starts to look like an IOU from an entity that has no capacity to pay, it will be valued as such.

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We haven't even rolled back the quantitive easing from the last recession. These financial rescues are now becoming permanent fixtures on our balance sheets. At least with health care, we would have something to show for these massive injections of money. Instead we just get inflated asset prices and growing wealth inequality.

Why is it a problem that they are still on the balance sheets? The instruments that have maturity will eventually vanish on their own, and the Fed can sell off the rest later.

It's better to do QE than "wait out" a recession, or wait for Congress. (Plus QE keeps the national debt service costs down too.)

The asset bubbles are not the real signs of inequality. After all, if every US citizen would have some savings and some of that in passive index funds, no one would complain about this. The problem is that people have no money, no disposable income, no savings, no job security, etc.

I think the comment above is suggesting that, either instead of or alongside, current Fed cash injections and distributions by the Treasury we need to push for and implement programs that leverage us out of the QE cycle. A universal healthcare system, student loan forgiveness and free or reduced cost education, a basic income over complex safety net benefits, that sort of thing. As it stands, QE is preventing a massive crash but it's not a long term solution.

I'm all for universal and single-payer healthcare, education reform, basic income (negative income tax is the best version of UBI), and so on.

But still, QE might be here to stay. It's hard to stay, I know very-very little about these things. (Even compared to - let's say - healthcare costs [see https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/ ].)

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