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Have you read the book? That's quite the oversimplification.

She says the deficit doesn't matter because a government that prints its own money can wipe out the debt with a few clicks of the button (if they so choose). The debt number doesn't really matter. It can be paid off by a large injection of printed cash. But that has other implications. Ultimately, it's inflation that we really care about, not the deficit. And there are better tools for controlling inflation that hurt fewer people than the current monetary policies in place.



> there are better tools for controlling inflation that hurt fewer people than the current monetary policies in place

This is the part of her argument that I found unconvincing. The tools sort of work. But once you have inflation and inflation expectations a tremendous amount of political capital and pain must be spent to get out of it. A system which regularly subjects itself to such a test will eventually fail it.


Printing money and issuing debt are almost interchangeable in terms of what they perform. My sense is that modern economics is steering towards full employment with an eye on inflation. Multiple goal setting and balancing makes more sense the strictly the 2% inflation goal.




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