ELi5: How can USA print unlimited notes to pay its loan because it has loan in US DOLLAR?

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I recently saw some videos where some guys say that USA can just print more notes to pay its debt because its debt is in US Dollar while other countries can’t, but isn’t it impossible because it would degrade the value of US dollar because that’s the reason countries don’t print unlimited currency notes.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Any nation with “fiat currency” like the United States can print more notes, though they usually just create money electronically these days.

Nations using the Euro can’t do this without permission from the European Central Bank (ECB) because the supply of Euros affects all nations using Euros. However, these nations could revert to their older currency (eg, Greek drachma) and create as many of those as they want, but the exchange rate against the Euro would likely go down.

As others have noted, indiscriminately printing money leads to hyperinflation. My favorite recentish example is Zimbabwe (https://www.foxnews.com/world/one-us-dollar-z35-quadrillion-as-zimbabwe-phases-out-old-currency), but it also happened after World War 2 (the old “wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread” story).

To avoid printing money on a political whim, the US currently delegates money creation to the Federal Reserve Bank. However, some representatives have questioned whether this is a good idea and whether Congress should play a more direct role in money creation

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