Monetization of Debt
Whenever there is mention about the monetization and the inside of the government the type of words that are used are so eloquently put that it is difficult to fully understand what is the writer is trying to say. Therefore, when we speak about monetization, it refers to the process of printing money. It is carried out when the government is not able to get domestic or foreign buyers for its debt issue, normally in cases when the interest rate is not elevated enough to lure lenders and is an issue when there is a low interest rate atmosphere, what happens is that the Federal Reserve then buys the debt and makes out a check to the government. The government then uses this cash and then lowers all the currency outstanding.
This process is somewhat similar to what the Roman emperors used to do. They would use the Roman aureus in the treasury tax payments and shave off some of the gold from the edges, they would then proceed to melt the gold shavings and use it to make more coins. These coins were then used along with the original coins and would be put back into circulation and continued to have the same value. The amount of gold that was being circulated was not increasing, just the number of aureii. Due to the fact that a greater number of aureii was running along side just about the same amount of goods, the remaining result was in fact the first type of currency inflation that occurred.
This is similar to what the actual Federal Reserve does when it monetizes debt. Normally the common situations in which this occurs are for example one to two years after there has been a presidential election. The Federal Reserve chairman, have the propensity to monetizing more debt preceding a presidential election to as to keep the interest rates down and the economy going in the right way. This causes there to be a rising inflation rate in the following years.
The Federal Reserve monetized an astonishing amount in 1992 of $38 billion, contradictions claims by some political experts that George H. W. Bush lost due to the fact that the Federal Reserve failed to provide accommodation for his reelection. However, the truth is that in the months before the elections the Federal Reserve did all it could to accommodate George W. Bush’s reelection and the result of that accommodation can still be seen and just might cause inflation. Before the elections even started in 2004, the consumers of gasoline in American were already seeing record gasoline prices as well as other types of inflation symptoms.
