Europe is Literally Running out of Money

theatlantic.com

7 pointsmattobrien6 comments

It's time to print some money. - From end of article

It would seem to me that printing more money, and therefore causing the value of said money to drop (inflation) you would only be band-aiding a wound, a wound that needs to actually heal. Unless I'm misunderstanding the author.

I actually came on here because I thought the exact same thing. Utopia is always just one more printing press away.

It would be if we embraced Modern Monetary Theory :)

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/08/guest-post-modern-mon...

AFAIU the idea is that by printing money you basically take the money stuffed into matresses and give them to the disposal of the state. The question, of course, is whether the state is able to use them in such a way as to make them flow rather than get stuck once again.

Printing money means inflation and inflation is bad for debt owners (unless the debt is in another currency) and indeed also for "matresses".

But inflation is good for debtors themselves, and debt-made money eventually requires some inflation to make the debt load maintainable.

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