American Dollar: Ponzi Scheme?

[August1991]

Americans can print money as long as foreigners want to hold the greenback. 

[eyeball]

1 hour ago, August1991 said:

Americans can print money as long as foreigners want to hold the greenback. 

I think some 60% or more of US debt is held by Americans. A little more than how much Canadian debt is held by Canadians.

They're holding way way more debt though.

[paxamericana]

3 hours ago, August1991 said:

Americans can print money as long as foreigners want to hold the greenback. 

Yes

[paxamericana]

Which might I remind the Canadian audience here of your own stupidity for not wanting to be 51st. This is one of the primary benefits of becoming the global currency.

Being Canadian is quite literally the most retarded economic decision you can make.  There also isn’t a cultural reason for the separate border and being Anti-American is not morally justified.

Edited December 26, 2025 by paxamericana

[Shady]

Every western country currency is a ponzu scheme.  It’s time we went back to the gold standard.

[User]

15 hours ago, August1991 said:

Americans can print money as long as foreigners want to hold the greenback. 

The American dollar is no more a Ponzi scheme than any fiat currency is, which is basically every single country in the world. 

Printing money is a necessity, which is the entire basic premise of a fiat currency, because as the population grows, more $$$ is generated. There has to be more $$$ in circulation to represent that. 

The problems are when you also give the Fed the duty to control inflation AND control unemployment as well as manage debt and they then use printing money to influence those outcomes. 

28 minutes ago, Shady said:

Every western country currency is a ponzu scheme.  It’s time we went back to the gold standard.

There are a lot of problems with this, which is why we moved to a fiat currency. 

The problem is not the concept of a fiat currency, but with the management of it. 

 

[eyeball]

4 hours ago, Shady said:

Every western country currency is a ponzu scheme.  It’s time we went back to the gold standard.

I think an even bigger Ponzi scheme is the global human economy because we have a substandard way for evaluating things by leaving what's important out.  Instead of rating a country's worth by just looking at things like debt, GDP or how much gold they have squirreled away we could also adopt a standard that takes into account the value of a country's natural capital. Much of the global economy especially on the commodity side is entirely dependant on natural capital which includes sink services, the ability of our ecosystems to absorb and recycle our wastes back into useful products.

According to AI's answer to my question, is there a dollar value on natural capital and what is it.

Some estimates value global annual ecosystem services at over $150 trillion per year, which is more than global GDP. 

Annual Flow of Services: A prominent 2011 estimate valued the Earth's ecosystem services at approximately $125 trillion per year (in 2007 dollars), a figure larger than the global GDP at the time. More recent estimates from 2023 suggest an even higher annual value, potentially exceeding $150 trillion or even $179 trillion.

Economic Dependency: Beyond the direct value of services, analyses by the World Economic Forum suggest that approximately $44 trillion of economic value generation globally (more than half the world's GDP) is highly or moderately dependent on nature and its services, making it vulnerable to nature loss.

To be fair I also posed the question is the notion of natural capital just a bunch of hooey.

Amongst other things it replied;

Despite the controversy, the concept has moved from academic theory to mainstream implementation

I invite others to pose these questions themselves rather than wade into a quagmire of lies about who said what. I think this method of corroborating our opinions to try and present a balanced articulated opinion on something is valid so long as we're upfront about it.

[I am Groot]

23 hours ago, paxamericana said:

Which might I remind the Canadian audience here of your own stupidity for not wanting to be 51st. This is one of the primary benefits of becoming the global currency.

 

It shows how low the American right has sunk that you'd consider being able to borrow more money is one of the primary reasons for being American. Used to be a time when NOT borrowing money, but paying your way, was the thing American conservatives stood for.

And if the fat orange toad was even slightly serious about Canada joining the US he'd be saying he wants to bring them in as ten states, not one. The idea you'd have a state the size of Canada is as deranged as most of the rest of his demented bleatings.