The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.
I don't get why the government is the only one that gets to print money.
We don't really believe there's much room for the creation of new currencies if there is no real backing for a hard and credible issuer of that currency.
The Congress should not be creating money out of thin air, which is what Lincoln did when he created greenbacks. But it is a congressional responsibility to maintain gold and silver as a legal tender.
The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.
Germans tend to forget now that the euro was largely a Franco-German creation. No country has benefited more from the euro than Germany, both politically and economically. Therefore what has happened as a result of the introduction of the euro is largely Germany's its responsibility.
To those advocates of independent paper moneys who also champion the free market, I would address this simple question: "Why don't you advocate the unlimited freedom of each individual to manufacture dollars?" If dollars are really and properly things-in-themselves, why not let everyone manufacture them as they manufacture wheat and baby food?
I regard the bitcoin craze as totally asinine to create some manufactured currency.
Credits in your PayPal account are really just USD-backed - they are not a unique currency themselves. Other 'digital currencies,' such as Facebook Credits, can be created out of nothing and without limit, so they are not serious money.
