Technically bond markets with fiat currencies are unnecessary but for some reason they still exist.

nostrademons 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Why? The purpose of the bond market isn't to supply the government with currency, but rather to distribute risk and capital payments to those most willing to bear them.

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mono442 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The main purpose is definitely to supply the government with currency. Many countries put imo unnecessary restrictions on themselves and do not borrow directly from the central bank which would be simpler and cheaper.

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nostrademons an hour ago | parent | next [-]

If that were true we wouldn't have corporate bond markets, and municipal bond markets, and mortgage bond markets. All of these are capital markets where the capital goes to either a private party or a non-monetary-authority government.

Seignoriage (the practice of the government directly issuing currency to fund its government expenditures) has been around for about 2500 years and predates the invention of the bond market described in this article by roughly 1500 years.

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Ekaros 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Wouldn't that be just more complicated way to print money? With weird question about would it ever be possible lower debt without actually printing...

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mono442 an hour ago | parent [-]

Money comes from debt. Debt is essentially the way to print money.

	▲	smallmancontrov an hour ago \| parent [-]
		No. Money is a type of debt, but a very special type, one that has no duration and is available now rather than locked up for some period of time. When the treasury sells bonds, it replaces "unlocked" money with "locked" money in the private sector, decreasing the amount of unlocked money in the private sector to balance the increased amount of unlocked money in the public sector. The amount of unlocked money remains constant. If the Federal Reserve prints reserves (unlocked money) to buy bonds (locked money) and keeps doing this as they mature so that WALCL goes up and to the right, that's money printing.

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smallmancontrov an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

"Some reason" is Separation of Power applied to money printing. The Federal Reserve is an independent body guarding the money printer from the politicians.

Congress (and, increasingly, the executive) can't simply choose to print and spend. They can choose to spend in excess of revenue, but to do this they must sell treasuries, they must borrow and spend, but the bond market is allowed to say "no." We are seeing this in real time as interest rates rise. In contrast, if the politicians want to print and spend they have to beg/pressure/persuade the Federal Reserve to run the money printer and buy the treasuries.

Whether this is good or bad depends on your politics. I like separation of powers. I'm not keen on the idea of handing congress/executive the power of the printer, people in the US are very sanguine about how that can go. I'm also not keen on destroying the money printer, because the events of 100 years ago showed us what deflationary shocks look like (even worse than the inflationary shocks) and unlike my goldbug relatives and crypto-pilled friends I payed attention. The mechanism of having an independent body that guards the printer is the best compromise I have heard, so personally I'm glad it's the one we have.

Challenge: propose something better.