Any economics aware people want to chime in on this?

[TheVisitor]

If I was running a government, I'd want to own the banks... I'd want to make sure that I owned any institution with any record of my "balances" and "debts"... Because I was thinking about how each country is pretty much separated by it's own currency...

And if I was a world leader and I controlled the banks... This also meant I controlled the national " debt", because of who is to say I changed what was in the books, when I own the very banks that I changed the books in.

I thought about currency for some time tonight and I came to the realization that the same exact methods used by business are probably just used by banks on larger scales. The whole currency thing is a total farce. I mean, couldn't the US simply be telling the American people that we are indebted xxx amount of dollars to China, when we really just changed the books to reflect this...

For example, I own the banks... So I can alter my account information to make me look like I have 70 trillion dollars, now... I send it to China and I pay my debt off... It is like playing Monopoly while you're the banker in the game, except the bank till is invisible and no one can see it...

How do people not see the huge flaw in banks? Now we have governments who own huge portions of our largest banks in America...

Also, who decides which person gets money in their account? Why does our currency keep inflating? Isn't that because we continue to create more and more money? If money is something that can just be created so simply... Either physically or electronically, why do so many people fall into the mindset that they need money for everything? Is this what most rich people realize? I do admit I am better off than I once was... But I have to say, this whole concept of "money" is just a way to make people feel rewarded for being slaves... Voluntary slaves... Consumer whores as some would put it... Well go ahead and prove me wrong someone... Please

[SheilaT]

1. If all the banks

(or governments) do is print more money all the time, then you have out of control inflation. We have not had any real inflation to speak of for a very long time in this country, and we've never had the sort of hyper-inflation that truly destroys economies. People who love to make scary predictions constantly predict we're on the edge of some awful hyper inflation, but they're wrong.

As to who decides which person gets money in their account, it's largely a function of who deposits money into their own account. It doesn't just happen in some arbitrary or random fashion.

To a large extent any monetary system depends on a lot of trust. When people lose trust you have things like runs on banks, which happened in this country in the early part of the Great Depression. So that means the owners of the banks -- and in this country the government does not own banks, although it does run the federal reserve -- the owners aren't going to just alter account information for anyone because the breakdown in trust would be disastrous. Which isn't to say mistakes aren't made on occasion, but they are not systematic or designed to pervert the system of trust. Without money everything would have to be on a barter system, and you'd never get any sort of sophisticated -- above the level of one small village -- economy going.

As for needing money, there are at least two aspects to that. One is the fact that in today's world it takes rather a lot of money to maintain even a very minimal standard of living. There are those who live more or less off the grid, or own their home outright in a place with extremely low property taxes and grow as much of their own food as possible, but those are a very tiny minority. The rest of us buy or rent in the marketplace, buy food, clothing, need some sort of transportation and so on. The other aspect of needing money is that there are a lot of forces at work to persuade people that they need a lot more than that minimum. Advertizing, especially on TV in our culture, is the main driver of that persuasion. Not owning a TV is incredibly freeing on many levels, especially from ads of any kind.

I am not entirely certain where you are heading with your post, other than to express an extreme skepticism about the purpose of banks, and to think that they operate in ways I'm pretty sure they do not.

[roseBudd]

2. You are on the wrong track. The US is a monetary sovereign

This is a good link that explains modern money

http://mythfighter.com/2010/08/13/monetarily-sovereign-the-key-to-understanding-economics/

A Monetarily Sovereign government has the exclusively unlimited power to create its sovereign currency. Monetary Sovereignty is the foundation of economics. The United States is Monetarily Sovereign. It has the exclusively unlimited power to create the dollar. China, Canada, Australia, the UK and Japan are Monetarily Sovereign. They have the exclusively unlimited power to create their sovereign currencies.

The U.S. government created the dollar from thin air, by creating from thin air, all the laws and rules that made the dollar possible. Being sovereign over the dollar, the U.S. can do anything it wishes with the dollar. It can make the dollar equal to three euros, two pumpkins or one partridge in a pear tree. The federal government’s power over the dollar is unlimited.

Illinois, Cook County and Chicago are monetarily non-sovereign. The dollar is not their sovereign currency, and they do not have the unlimited power to create dollars. France, Germany and Italy are monetarily non-sovereign. They do not have the exclusively unlimited power to create their currency, the euro.

You, your business and I also are monetarily non-sovereign. Even Bill Gates and Warren Buffet do not have the unlimited power to create dollars. They are monetarily non-sovereign.

Because our Monetarily Sovereign nation has the unlimited power to create its sovereign currency, the dollar, it never needs to ask anyone for dollars. It doesn’t need to tax or borrow, and it never can be forced into bankruptcy. It can pay any bill of any size at any time.

In fact, the federal government creates money by paying its bills. The U.S. has created many trillions of dollars, simply by pressing computer keys, and will continue to do so. It does not “owe” anyone for creating these dollars. The government cannot live beyond its means; it has no means to live beyond.

By contrast, if the debts of France, Germany et al, exceed their ability to obtain euros they, as monetarily non-sovereign nations, could be forced into bankruptcy. They did not create the euro, nor do they have the unlimited ability to pay bills.

Everything you believe about your personal finances — debts, deficits, spending, affordability, saving and budgeting — are inappropriate to U.S. federal finances. For this reason, your personal intuition about U.S. financing likely is wrong.

[TheVisitor]

3. This is pretty much what I was getting at...

[roseBudd]

4. Monetary sovereignty is good. It means the government will always be able to get it done...

as long as we can keep the Tea Bags in check.

The Fed runs the economy with a dual purpose, control inflation and boost employment. republiTEas hate that

[CTyankee]

5. which is why we can't be Greece...

it's amazing to me that the Euro has lasted this long. Paul Krugman has talked about this at length. I learn so much from him...

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/01/the-state-of-the-euro-in-one-graph/

[Volaris]

6. That part about personal finances being equivalent to federal finances being wrong is spot on...

I didn't actually get that until I saw a Chris Hedges q&a that was basically..

If I have to balance my family checkbooks at the end of the month, why doesn't the federal government?
"Because in your kitchen, you don't print your own money."
That's when I really GOT how useful Fiat Currency can be. Run right, it's the most creatively brilliant useful idea humans have ever devised.
Run wrong, it creates nothing but debt peonage and wage slaves for Bankers.