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| The problem is nothing is "free", or without drawbacks. There is a problem with printing money and that is inflation. The drawback of inflation is that $10,000 you put under your mattress when 30 years old buys 1/4 of what you hoped when you take out at 65. So there is definitely a cost to m9ney printing and it is paid by every person who saves a dollar.
Central banks for this reason had a mandate to regulate, restrict the money supply and is a mandate they have failed completely on in the last 15 years.
But all is well as long as, being the reserve currency, you can keep the demand up. Enter the Petrodollar system where every bit of oil pumped is to be paid for in $US which ensures a demand of $US while oil is produced. This keeps inflation down, but still does not fix the fact that the presses have put many, many $US into circulation - those $$s are out there.
So now comes the issue of what happens when demand for $US drops? How could this happen? Well, that oil previously sold for $US is now sold to China, and numerous other countries for something other than $US, and countries like Russia, Syria and Iran are producing oil not sold in $US that the country issuing $US would very much desire to be sold in $US to keep inflation down at home.
So, you can print lots of paper while there is an export market for it. The jig is up when demand drops. So a country that once sold or bought oil using $US that now uses another currency becomes a problem. Especially when this happens at a time when the US printed unimaginable amount of paper. So any country switching from $US usage becomes an enemy of the US survival and must be brought to heel. Regime change or outright invasion is a good way to ensure $US demand keeps rising to offset the money printing. Otherwise all those $US come home and bid up prices locally - inflation.
So who pays for this money printing? The savers in the US, the consumers when inflation hits because of shrinking $US demand and the citizens of countries destroyed to ensure the $US keeps being used in those countries.
Printing paper is free for some, but many, many others pay an extremely high price. | |
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Why is a trade deficit a bad thing?
