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I had the opportunity to read the Bangor Daily News’ opinion pages for Nov. 22. I think the “Other Voices” from the Las Vegas Review-Journal titled “Biden failing as steward of public money” presents an inaccurate understanding of the national debt, which appears rhetorically intended to scare readers. Such fear is reflected in the “.COMents” section by “Blue.”
I would offer to counter these fears by reminding the writers that we are no longer on the gold standard; we have a fiat currency issued as notes from the Federal Reserve banks. The “debt” is a measure of the amount of interest-bearing notes (i.e. bonds) the Federal Reserve has issued. Those interest-bearing notes can be converted to non-interest bearing notes (i.e. money) at the bank’s discretion. This is called quantitative easing.
A country that issues its own currency can’t run out of money. Taxes create a demand for the country’s fiat currency. At the federal level, taxes are not what is needed to pay for federal purchases. The federal government levies taxes that must be paid in the currency issued by the Federal Reserve thereby setting the need to trade in the dollar.
We don’t have a debt crisis. But we do have many politicians who use fear tactics.
Duncan Schweitzer
Belfast
