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Sep 30, 2024
11:41:56am
Japan Coug Intervention Needed
Money supply ("printing money") and national debt are two very different things,
and have different impacts.

Recklessly expanding the money supply (or "printing money") drives high/increased inflation, all else being equal, and would be a problem globally if all countries were doing it. The impact on exchange rates would depend on other factors as well, but all else being equal, if all countries are expanding their money supply at equivalent rates, I guess the impact on exchange rates would be negligible. But all countries would suffer high inflation regardless.

Increases in the national debt are a different animal, and affect the solvency of the national governments involved ("sovereign risk"). At some point, the debt load becomes so high that the government might go bankrupt, or default on some of its debt, which has happened a number of times throughout the years in some countries, especially less rich countries (for example, in Argentina a few times during my lifetime). Some countries are rich enough that even with a high debt load, the risk of default is very low — the markets assume this for countries like the US and Japan. However, even in those countries, there is an impact on taxes and tax rates, which have to remain high (or at least higher than they would have otherwise been) in order to service the interest on all the debt.

If all countries have a high debt load and a high risk of default, the impact is that interest rates on government debt would generally be high (or at least higher than they would be with lower levels of debt, all else being equal), which would probably result in overall real interest rates (nominal interest rates less inflation) being higher than necessary. This would definitely result in slower economic growth than you would have otherwise.
Japan Coug
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Japan Coug
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Sep 30, 2024
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