It's more complicated than that (lending also increases the money supply) though you're right that "printing money" loosely speaking is the primary irreversible driver.

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dennis_jeeves2 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Of course the printed money has to be put into circulation ( either lending or spending by the gov)

	▲	somewhereoutth 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		In modern economies, banks create money by originating loans. The government controls this process with various policy levers.

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orwin 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Depends on the default rate, and I'm pretty sure the past year in the US, default created more money than what was printed (even taking QE into account).

Basically why everybody decided to go with money printing during COVID btw, people realised in 2008 that a 2B default is the equivalent to printing 2B, so if that's the case, why not print money instead (that's a bad calculation imho, in my opinion in a capitalist market economy you need defaults for the market to work, and I would say, you need defaults that pierce the corporate veil).

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throwawaymaths a day ago | parent [-]

lending increases the money supply and amortizing and default decrease.

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orwin 20 hours ago | parent [-]

No, reimbursing decrease money supply. Default does not.

	▲	throwawaymaths 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		yes it does. if i loan you 100. in my head i have 100 of assets coming to me, and you have 100, so the system now has 200. if you default, "so sorry throwaway you ain't seeing it", i have to write down the expectation im getting that 100 back. which means that i have 0, and the 100 is out in the system, spent. the system now has 100. it is the case that some people refer to things like bailouts and inflating away your debt as soft "defaulting" but those are special cases and not the general case.