Greenspan: "There is nothing to prevent the government from creating as much money as it wants."

What Hacker News said

Cites RobertoG · 2017-12 · on “South Korea considers cryptocurrency tax”

National currencies are not really in risk. Suppose that bitcoin or similar are used as currency in practice (that it's very far of happening, by the way). Even if you are able to do all your operations in a cryptocurrency, you will need to pay taxes. Governments only accept their own currency, so, you need to get it to pay taxes, so, demand of national currency is going to exist always. >> "economic vessels like national bonds and other treasuries that nations rely on to borrow money?" This is only an institutional arrangement. Nations with their currency don't really need markets to get money. For instance, in the case of USA, the FED can produce so much money as they think is appropriate

Cites Maro · 2019-02 · on “Berkshire Hathaway 2018 Annual Shareholder Letter [pdf]”

Mainstream economic theory is considered garbage by the majority of mainstream economists :) Joking aside, what MMT says is pretty easy to understand from reading ~100 pages and watching some YT lectures/debates, where mainstream economists also voice their opinion. A reasonably intelligent person can make up their own mind, irrespective of what others think. Finally, if you watch debates on YT, it's not true that mainstream economists say it's garbage. They usually say "MMT is essentially accounting truisms". Here's Paul Ryan asking Alan Greenspan about this: [this video]

Cites omegaworks · 2019-03 · on “Rewarding Neglect and Punishing Investment in Struggling Neighborhoods”

Can we close the book on this "unfunded pension liability" nonsense? The government can create the raw dollars needed to fund the pensions. Just listen to Alan Greenspan himself shut down Paul Ryan's perverse anti-social security zealotry: [this video]

Cites omegaworks · 2019-03 · on “The World’s Cheapest Hospital Has to Get Even Cheaper”

I knew I'd get this kneejerk reaction to "simply create and allocate the currency," I was holding out hope that responders would finish reading the sentence. What I said was: >a nation-state... can create and allocate the currency to serve this purpose. I totally agree with you in a general sense. Creating and allocating currency and distributing it to the general population equally will cause the scenario you describe. "More dollars chasing fewer goods," as Greenspan described[1]. However, if we take the hypothetical scenario that the government agrees to pay exactly the current cost of the procedure at Narayana for medical procedures , none of what you described will come to pass. Wait tim

Cites omegaworks · 2021-12 · on “India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman”

>I've paid Social Security and Medicare taxes for 25 years, since my first paycheck, and it's not likely I'll ever receive anything from these programs based on current projections. This is a purely political decision. When Paul Ryan made this assertion in Congress to justify privatizing the system Alan Greenspan shot him down[1]. The government chooses how many dollars to allocate to Social Security and Medicare. Whether those dollars come from taxes elsewhere is almost entirely irrelevant. The only factor is whether seniors will get enough from the program to buy what they need to live. This has as much to do with the prices of goods as it does with the size of the benefit itself. We will

Cites mempko · 2025-01 · on “Stargate Project: SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX to build data centers”

Modern monetary systems function through two main channels: government spending and bank lending. Every dollar in circulation originates from one of these sources - either government fiscal operations (deficit spending) or bank credit creation through loans. This means all money is fundamentally based on debt, though "debt" has very different implications for a currency-issuing government versus private borrowers. Government debt operates fundamentally differently from household debt since the government controls its own currency. As former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan noted to Congress, the U.S. can always meet any obligation denominated in dollars since it can create them. The real constrai

Cites mempko · 2026-06 · on “Alan Greenspan Dies at 100; Led Fed During Boom Before 2008 Bust”

Here is an old clip of Alan Greenspan explaining to Paul Ryan why the social security system can't go bankrupt. [this video]