“Nowhere to Run – A Monetary Crisis” Follow-Up

There were quite a few comments and questions from the last Martenson Report (Nowhere to Run – A Monetary Crisis).  Now that I am back, finally, from all of my traveling and vacation, I want to address a few of those queries.   If I have not gotten to your question and it’s important to you, please ask it again here and I’ll do my best to get to it.

One question ‘theme’ centered on seeking clarification of money, how it gets into circulation, and what is meant by ‘printing.’

Here’s one from user acomfort:

Chris,

From you, I have learned that all money is lent into existence, yet you continue to use the word “print.” Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say, lend or lent or lending? When I think of lending as opposed to printing it puts it in a different perspective which now includes some constrains on the money manufacturing.

Now that all the major currencies are being similarly subjected to printing [to lending?] (i.e., “quantitative easing”) and/or shoveled [and/or lent ] in obscene quantities into the coffers of the reckless and imprudent (Goldman Sachs, Greece, etc), the final restraint has been removed from government actions.

We happen to live at a time when all of the major currencies are being horribly over-printed [[over lent?]] and governments are running the most reckless fiscal deficits in living memory. Our choice, should we choose to play the game, seems to be limited to picking which of the currencies is falling least quickly.

If all money is lent into existence, what are you saying/implying when you use the word print?

Still learning a lot from your posts.

– Arlen

My answer to this is that it’s only ‘lending’ if the Federal Reserve someday reverses its process and asks for its money back in exchange for the various ‘assets’ (i.e. debt instruments) that it purchased with freshly-created money, or ‘credit,’ or whatever we want to call the debits it placed on the books of the financial institutions that held the ‘assets.’  Note that I am putting quotes around the word ‘assets’ because it is not clear to me that these holdings have a value close to what they were purchased for, or any value at all, in some cases.