> rats chewing up the money

Profit for the US government. Fixed by plastic bills.

Every $ printed but never redeemed is a significant profit (assuming other costs are low like printing).

Especially yummy when countries just want to hoard the currency - same as selling stamps that are never used:

  estimate the stock of U.S. currency circulating in Argentina ... U.S. currency inflows during 1988-1992 totaled $20.8 billion

▲ vel0city 8 hours ago | parent [-]

> Every $ printed but never redeemed is a significant profit

Redeemed? Redeemed for what? Its not like they're still trading dollars for gold at any kind of fixed rate.

	▲	robocat 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Nitpicking over words isn't profitable either, and if you're trying to appear sophisticated you've missed the mark with me. I would love to see an analysis of the benefits of crime to the government accounts.
	▲	Sohcahtoa82 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I interpret "redeemed" as meaning "spent on a good or service". Since the government can just print money, it can spend whatever it wants, but doing so creates inflation because of the higher money supply. Dollars that disappear (ie, they get eaten by rats) push that inflation back down by removing money from the supply.