I wonder if those wild claims of people who sell bonds and gold coins can actually be true? I have my doubts, which I wrote about in 1985, published in Reason magazine.{tk] My claim is that it is not in the U.S. Congress nor Treasury’s self-interest “to inflate” nor even to make people worry about “an intention to inflate” the value of the U.S. currency – down to Zero value, or perhaps merely less than last decade.
[footnote TK: Reason headline writers assigned my essay a misleading title, “A Dubious Debt Doubt,” but that was just being playful.]

It is indeed not only dangerous to talk like that, or suggest it, but it is totally suicidal for a government running a fiscal deficit.

What can “to inflate away the debt” possibly mean, in today’s context?

In the fairy story the king has a big debt and he decided not to pay it off in the gold coins like he received when he sold his bonds. Instead he would print up little paper certificates, saying “this is a coin.” Then the bond owners would have to go away, receiving “payment” in this new “legal tender.” But that tells you about paying off the king’s debt.

What happens the next time the king wants to borrow from the money lenders?

The money-lenders’ demand for the king’s bonds is the dominant factor in this process. The king cannot force people to buy his bonds; they hide their wealth and pretend poverty. What is one supposed to do in confronting a tax on wealth?

The U.S. National Debt Must Be “Rolled Over” about every 6 Months.

In my 1985 article, I showed statistics current at that time about the maturity structure of the U.S. government debt held by the public. I have not done the updating research, but that is a simple search engine question. The situation is undoubtedly worse, with the government running up the entitlement spending.

Interest rates are determined by the Federal Reserve, in relationship to the international capital markets, so it is difficult (i.e. impossible) to predict any future rates, or values, there. Yet, there is a “model” of human behavior that tells me IF the government sent a signal it might “play with the idea” (run a scenario in a computer model?) of inflating away the national debt, indeed the free market, worldwide,

would WANT TO DUMP US TREASURIES AND NOT BUY ANY MORE.

Imagine what would happen to the foreign exchange rate of the U.S. Dollar? The recent years of a “strong dollar” and falling oil (priced in “dollars”) would be ancient history. Consider what has happened to the UK currency exchange rate, an instantaneous indicator of demand for a Unit of Accounting (“pound sterling”).

It would be sudden. No warnings. It would be a sudden “crash” one day, without warning, when something silly like a careless remark by the President – who really does not understand international finance – sends the whole “confidence game” into the toilet. The British experience on June 24 is a lesson worth learning, when a government’s Unit of Accounting falls out of favor with international bond traders.

Wait for it. It is in our future.