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I Need a Lesson in Basic Economics. Why Don't We Print More Money?

132 replies

Tortington · 19/09/2011 16:33

I was reading this when i decided i needed a lesson in basic economics.

I was talking about the state of the country with my SIL the other week when her 17 yo daughter said " why don't we just print more money"

i Naively said something along the lines of it all being relative and that if you print a lot of money, the money that you are printing wont be worth anything.

then the article linked to above - kind of made me think i need a lesson in economics.

its not very readable that article i don't think - but please read it and tell me why printing money is a good idea?

OP posts:
niceguy2 · 20/09/2011 09:13

I often wish the news would spend more time explaining things in more layman's terms.

If we replace words like 'deficit' with 'overspend' and 'quantative easing' with 'printing money' then perhaps your average person could understand more.

One of the most shocking interviews I've seen for some time was a group of MP's being asked what our national debt was. Not only could none of them put a figure anywhere near it, most were getting confused between our deficit and the debt. So if they don't even understand the difference between an overspend & debt, how can we have any confidence they can solve the problem?

TobyLeWolef · 20/09/2011 09:38

The cake analogy helped a lot (thanks, Abs!)

What I don't get is why the US would care if China printed more money in order to pay their debt to them? Surely if they're still getting paid, it doesn't matter.

(I haven't read the second half of the thread because I feared my brain might explode, so sorry if it's already been asked).

I think what I can't get my head around is that it's just pieces of paper! Why does it matter if there are 1 or 100 of them? They're still just pieces of paper, worth the same as each other.

niceguy2 · 20/09/2011 10:03

The paper isn't worth anything. It's what you can buy with it.

So let's say the govt printed enough money to give everyone a million pounds. Poverty over yes? Everyone can buy food, nice house, nice car. I wish but no.

What would happen is you'd go out to the Ferrari garage and try to buy yourself a car. Except everyone else also has pots of money but there's hardly any Ferrari's. So the dealer puts the price up. After all, he's got a million too! Why would he want to sell you his Ferrari at a fraction of the price he can REALLY sell it for.

And it's not the US who cares if China printed more money. It's the other way around.

TobyLeWolef · 20/09/2011 10:05

No, but you said that the US would do their nut if China pulled that on them.

Either way, though.

I think I'm getting it a bit... The Zimbabwe and Ferrari analogies are helping.

niceguy2 · 20/09/2011 10:18

Oh sorry. Yes, i get you. What I meant is that the US is printing a shit load of money to keep their economy going. But they owe China loads of money.

The double standards is if the table was reversed, the US would be screaming blue murder if China was printing money whilst owing the US loads of money as the chinese would be in effect devaluing the debt.

But since the US is the one in debt, obviously they are keeping silent on that issue. And China having more money than they know what to do with and needing the US to keep buying their widgets are turning a blind eye too. But the day will come when it will need to be dealt with.

The problem is the US seem to lack the political will to do what it takes to really fix the issue.

AbsDuWolef · 20/09/2011 11:18

It was easier to conceptualise when currencies were linked to the gold standard. So, if a country had 200 kgs of gold in the central bank, and 200 bank notes, then each bank note would represent 1kg of gold. As soon as you print 2,000 bank notes, then each bank note would only represent 100gr of gold, and so on.

Now, currencies are floating so that they reflect their position in the market, rather than how much their country has in gold reserves, and countries are a lot freer and more able to manipulate their currency to their own ends.

At the end of the day, there are finite resources - there are only so many ferraris in the world, so even if a ferrari cost £100,000 and everyone had £100,000, there would still not be enough ferraris to go around. If the price of the ferrari is then only based on its market value (that is, how much people want it and how rare it is), it will then go up in price. The rarer something is, the more valuable it is. You have crazy examples of this in history, like in around the 18th Century (I think) when the Dutch went NUTS over tulips, and the price of tulip bulbs became extortionate, like £thousands for one tulip bulb. Thinking of it now it's just weird.

One of the reasons why Standard and Poor downgraded the US is because there is too much political interference and posturing going on, which is damaging their economic recovery (like before they raised the debt ceiling they were all arguing and prattling about, when all along they all knew they had to raise the debt ceiling, or they were screwed).

UrsulaWoleffay · 20/09/2011 11:22

My brain hurts.

LoremIpsum · 20/09/2011 11:59

So because money is something we invented, we have to stick to the rules we attached to it or it becomes worthless because it's the rules/structure that give it value? Is that right, oh people who know about these things?

edam · 20/09/2011 13:27

Cote - the economists who are employed in or pontificate about financial services are just as responsible for the financial crisis as the bankers and traders. There has been a catastrophic, systemic failure of the markets and the entire financial system. We can't carry on as before. We can't just rely on people who claim to be experts but actually have been found extremly wanting.

The whole industry needs a complete revolution so it starts to serve the interests of business and society, not drive it. Look at UBS - even with all the supposed regulations and controls in place they still allow a member of staff to rack up several billion pounds worth of losses without anyone noticing. (And didn't call the cops in for best part of 24 hours. Hmm)

BertieBotts · 20/09/2011 13:32

The thing that Viva said about bread - there is a cartoon of this in the horrible histories book Vile Victorians, if any of your DCs have it sitting on their shelves. I learned loads from horrible histories books.

Tortington · 20/09/2011 19:54

dare i ask another question now i understand quantative easing.

(deffo going to call my next imaginary child 'quantative easing' i love saying it so much " ooh today i i discussed quantative easing with my daughter quantative easing")

............FUTURES

what are ;futures? lots of banking city types talk about futures - what's that all about

use a cake analogy Grin

OP posts:
VivaLeBeaver · 20/09/2011 20:07

Oooh, I haven't even read the horrible histories books. Good to know I was right though. Grin

niceguy2 · 20/09/2011 20:57

Futures is as far as I understand it, gambling plain & simple.

"Investors" speculate on the future price of oil and other such commodities and buy contracts based on their hunch. In essence its a bit like going into a betting shop and saying "I think that red rum will win this race" and plonking a shit load of money on it.

The only difference between gambling & futures that I can see is that with the latter someone gives you millions, maybe billions to gamble with. Whereas you tend to have to put all your own cash into the bookies.

Happy to be corrected if I am wrong.

PootlePosyPerkin · 20/09/2011 21:07

Oh FGS - I still don't bloody understand! I never realised I was so thick Blush.

TequillaMockingBird · 20/09/2011 21:37

Hang on, this is not what the Independent told me to expect. How does all this relate to skiing with babies?

VivaLeBeaver · 20/09/2011 21:47

Well if we printed loads of money in the uk, it would be worth less. So when you go skiing with Mark warner in France the exchange rate would be one euro to £3000. So eating out would be well expensive.

Hope that helps.

CoteDAzur · 20/09/2011 22:00

"So because money is something we invented, we have to stick to the rules we attached to it or it becomes worthless because it's the rules/structure that give it value?"

More like, money has value because central banks say it is legal tender, and it's value fluctuates according to demand.

CoteDAzur · 20/09/2011 22:15

edam - re "the economists who are employed in or pontificate about financial services are just as responsible for the financial crisis as the bankers and traders"

With all due respect, edam (and I mean that), I don't get the impression that you really know what caused this financial crisis. If you did, you would not claim that everyone who works within the financial sector was somehow responsible for the credit crunch.

Economists don't "pontificate" about financial services, by the way. If anything, they pontificate about macroeconomic data.

Meglet · 20/09/2011 22:19
AbsDuWolef · 20/09/2011 22:27

Right , explaining futures using cake.

As we are all overly aware, cupcakes are the shizzle at the moment, but as a serious and wily cake buyer and consumer, you feel that very soon, cupcakes will no longer be the shizzle and it's going to be All About Fairy Cakes. You think that circa December, fairy cakes are going to be sold in twee bunting covered shops, at £3 a cake. So, you make an agreement with a baker that you will buy 100 fairy cakes at £2.50 a cake on 1 December, hoping that the price of fairy cakes will go up like crazy, and you can sell them on to twee bunting shop at 50p profit per fairy cake.

That's what a future is - it is essentially betting that the value of something is going to go up or down, and then entering into a contract (called an option - I may be getting mixed up) saying that you will be buying that whatever, on the date you preset, for a set amount. You don't have to buy it, but you can if you want to. Options are very common in employee share schemes. Some of my colleagues were given options 18 months ago to buy the company's shares at something like $60, which was then usable (proper term - excisable) a year later. However, at that point the share price had dropped to something like $10 so no one exercised their option and cried/laughed instead.

CoteDAzur · 20/09/2011 22:31

niceguy - re ""Investors" speculate on the future price of oil and other such commodities and buy contracts based on their hunch. In essence its a bit like going into a betting shop"

Not really. There are of course speculators in the world, but they are by far outnumbered by serious investors that buy/sell futures and options to hedge against future risk.

For example, if you are the finance director of a steel manufacturer, you will buy USD futures to hedge against significant currency fluctuations because your main raw material iron ore is priced in USD. Your counterparty might be an American company importing its goods from the UK, trying to protect itself from sudden appreciation of GBP against the USD.

RedRubyBlue · 20/09/2011 22:37

Okay. Bailing out a country in debt works like this.

A tourist arrives in a hotel and slams down a 100 Euro note. He says;

"I want to see the room before I book it and I will leave this note here as a deposit"

He goes off to look at the room.

The hotelier grabs the note and runs to pay the butcher that he was unable to pay.

The butcher grabs the note and runs to pay the local pub where he has run up a tab.

The landlord grabs the note and runs to pay the brewery.

The brewer grabs the note and runs to pay the local 'working girl' he has been seeing.

The 'working girl' runs to the hotelier to pay for the room she has been 'renting'.

The tourist comes down and says "the room is disgusting" and picks up his 100 Euro note and leaves.

CoteDAzur · 20/09/2011 23:02

Abs - Futures and options are not the same thing.

A futures contract basically says that on a specific date in the future, I will buy from (or sell to) you this asset at this price. I agree to buy EUR/USD at 1.40 on 1/1/2012, for example.

Options are different because you don't have to buy or sell anything at that future date. You buy (or sell) the option that gives you the right to do it on a future date. I buy an option that gives me the right to buy EUR/USD at 1.40 on 1/1/2012. If it is under 1.40 on that date, I do nothing and my only loss will be the price of the option which I already paid for. However, if it is over 1.40, I exercise my right to buy EUR/USD at 1.40, immediately sell it at market price, and make money.

All this can of course be done speculatively. It can also be done because, for example, your company will be buying raw materials denominatedd in USD on 1/1/2012 and you want to limit your exposure in case the exchange rate makes a significant move.

CoteDAzur · 20/09/2011 23:03

RedRuby - That is not how it works, at all.

LoremIpsum · 21/09/2011 00:10

Cote, I may be firmly on the thickos bench, but haven't you just rephrased what I said without the rules bit?