Japan is Wiping Government Debt via its Central bank - Should the US do the Same?
The BoJ currently owns 40% of Japan's debt. Some free-market advocates would scorn at this strategy being applied in the US, but so far it hasn't caused hyperinflation or had any adverse effect. In fact, it's been prosperous for the Japanese economy in some ways.
In an insightful article written by Ellen Brown, the founder of the Public Banking Institute, she states:
"The Bank of Japan is in the process of owning most of the outstanding government debt of Japan (it currently owns around 40%). BoJ holdings are part of the consolidated government balance sheet. So its holdings are in fact the accounting equivalent of a debt cancellation. If I buy back my own mortgage, I don’t have a mortgage. If the Federal Reserve followed the same policy and bought 40% of the US national debt, the Fed would be holding $8 trillion in federal securities, three times its current holdings from its quantitative easing programs.
Eight trillion dollars in money created on a computer screen! Monetarists would be aghast. Surely that would trigger runaway hyperinflation! But if Japan’s experience is any indication, it wouldn’t. Japan has a record low inflation rate of .02 percent. That’s not 2 percent, the Fed’s target inflation rate, but 1/100th of 2 percent – almost zero. Japan also has an unemployment rate that is at a 22-year low of 2.8%, and the yen was up nearly 6% for the year against the dollar as of April 2017."
In an interview I did with Ellen last year, she explains how monetary policy can be evolved to resolve the massive issues we face, including the debt bubble:
Steve Keen is another provocative economist who advocates for a modern debt jubilee. I interviewed him too:
Now we don't have to agree with everything that Ellen and Steve say, but do you think they have a point: is it impossible to soften the landing of the death of the fiat monetary system and the petrodollar supremacy, or can we implement a modern debt jubilee as we transition into a new era?
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