Quote from: BubbleBoy on October 05, 2011, 01:39:17 PM

Your conclusion about how states can always and easily print their way out of recession is almost surreal, so I'm going to limit myself to a few closing remarks.

What about Bitcoin? Bitcoins are literally created out of thin air, how come bitcoin hasn't fallen apart? Are you saying it will?

Quote from: BubbleBoy

The link you have supplied shows the Fed's balance sheet, on one hand the assets (table 1) it has acquired in exchange for freshly printed monetary base, and on the other hand it's liabilities, things like outstanding currency and bank reserves (table 1 continued). Commercial banks can't simply deposit treasuries towards the reserve requirements as you claim, the Fed only acquires treasuries when it decides to do so, so banks looking to meet reserve requirements need to trade the treasuries on the market. This clamps the money multiplier to a value controlled by the Central Bank, and not an ever increasing quantity proportional to the national debt.

Read it properly please. The FED accepts Treasuries in exchange for reserves when it conducts Repo transactions. If you don't know what a Repo is, please look it up. Therefore, if someone is short reserves, and wants to convert a Treasury into reserves it simply enters into a Repo Transaction with the FED. The Repo transaction involves the FED holding a Treasury(or other form of public debt) for a short period of time, in exchange for Reserves given to the private sector. The private sector will then treat these reserves like cash.