Inflationistas have long insisted that the Fed can “print” all the money it wants. Deflationistas argue that it can’t. And now, we are beginning the process of finding out who is correct:
Fed Looks to Spur Growth by Buying Government Debt. Federal Reserve officials decided to reinvest principal payments on mortgage holdings into long-term Treasury securities, making their first attempt to bolster growth since March 2009 to keep the slowing U.S. economy from relapsing into recession.
The conventional inflationist argument is that the government can print as much paper as it wants. The problem with that is that in the US system, the government doesn’t print any paper, the Fed prints it and the government borrows from the Fed. So, the revised inflationist argument is that the purchase of Federal government debt is effectively the same thing as simply printing paper. I am dubious of this, as I am confident that the addition of these two intermediary steps with all the various complications they likely entail will derail the assumed equivalence. And then, of course, there is the question of whether the government can create debt as fast as it can print money even with the Fed promising that it will buy some of that debt. It is, after all, a mistake to assume that because the Fed has shown a willingness to buy a small portion of the newly-issued Federal debt, it will be willing to buy all of the newly-issued debt for an indefinite period of time. Which, you will note, is necessary if the equivalence is to hold.
I, for one, have seen absolutely no sign that the Federal Reserve is willing to put the interests of the national economy ahead of the health of its member banks, let alone itself. Have you? And remember, the $8 trillion in the M2 money supply is dwarfed by the $53 trillion in outstanding debt. The theoretical “printing” of the former will have to make up for the decline of the latter. Do the math.