Why do americans not realize that congress authorizes any amount of money to be printed via US treasury?
147343
Yes Mike, it's all very well about trust, but what happened in 1929?   Something similar may happen soon.   9/11 set the process in motion; Bush is carrying it further.  Thank goodness I'm a poor man, with little to lose.  You rich people had better buy gold or Chinese currency soonest.\nQuestioner bulabate is very near the mark when he talks about printing money - whose head is in the sand - his or Mike Gilbert's?  I reckon your's Mike, rather than bula's, not that I know much about the subject : in fact I don't think anyone does; not even Alan Greenspan.
1005657
the treasury department has control of all moneys. this is done at the national level, and not the state level.\n\nif you are talking about dispersing moneys to banks, the treasury department is ultimately responsible for that as well.\n\nIf you are asking who coins or prints money, the national mints do that (I believe they are in Philadelphia and Denver)
347294
Americans aren't concerned about other Americans, or sending $$$$ overseas if they can save a buck.  That communist china is using the $$$$ to build their military, people don't care. \n\nWalmart is a good example.   Another is the way the corporations are outsourcing thousands of jobs to third world countries like Mexico, Philippines and India.
223336
Money is only as good as the willingness of others to accept it as a medium of exchange.  So some countries could print money and it wouldn't buy anything.  That was the case of the United States when it was founded.  There were so much US Currency outstanding that it was said to be "Not worth a Continental".  Alexander Hamilton did a lot of reading and concluded that a central bank could borrow money, issue bonds backed by the full faith and credit of the fledgling nation (backed by the way by the power of taxation), and then issue currency in reasonable amounts against that.  He organized the first central bank in the United States, which, in time, evolved to the Federal Reserve.  As a result our currency has, for a long time, been one of the world's standard currency, so-called "sound as a dollar".  \n\nNow, with the United States spending more than it produces, we generate multi-billion dollar balance of payments deficits, especially with China.  Invevitably the value of the Chinese currency will increase and the value of the dollar will decrease.  The increased demand for Chinese goods and services will result in more dollars chasing that demand and therefore, the relative price of those goods and services will increase by the value of the dollar decreasing.\n\nSo, yes, countries can print money, but it is worthless unless other countries will accept it.  And it is not very worthwhile inside the country unless people accept it as a medium of exchange.  So they borrow hard currency like dollars or euros from the World Bank to finance their development and infrastructure.
231696
The U.S. had quite a bit of money at one time. And as all big wigs with money and clout do, they feel the need to put their two cents in pretty much everywhere. The American government feels they are strong enough to handle anything. That is so untrue. They stick their noses in foreign business and try to correct it (helping to form a new government in Iraq) and all the while, totally forget about their own citizens. We still have homeless veterans, We still have hungry children, we still have an awful drug problem. But is America spending their dollars to help those folks? Of course not. It's rediculous. A man once said to some folks, "Clean up your own backyard before you come talking about mine." America should listen to that statement.
467187
The US has an answer for every problem that can crop up. We pay specialists to sit around dreaming up problems with world currencies, just so we will have the answer, if and when that problem should come up. So the short answer is, we police the world because we have the means, the motive and the opportunity...
31207
that's not the way it works...The Us doesn't "have" any money...we have a debt in the trillions of dollars (and counting) The difference is made up by selling bonds and from borrowing from trade partners (goods exchange or cash loans)  -mainly China, nowadays.  They do not need the actual money (no gold standard- "money has no inherant value) to run things, they just need a number to guide how much they can spend....it is the worst way to handle finances of any scale, and the first time we have funded wars from almost exclusive overseas borrowing.. We are screwed.
109235
No way how can any country let alone USA give the rights to print the money for other countries. Thats in no way possible. That kind of a thing will affect the security and the economy of the country . So my answer is a Big NO
426672
Yes the control of Money/Power/Wealth is in the wrong hands "Congress" and illegitimately the corporate ruling class. Hence Local,State and Federal official not accountable to the public they are intended to represent plus an over abundant of Government entities that are completely inept in serving or providing to the public. They need to be held under the standard of immediate job loss if not productive same for elected officials! Also if the public had control of Money/Power/Wealth then we would not have products and services of low Quality for they would not be patronized! Equal access for all legal citizens to Money/Power/Wealth pricing control extreme immigration restrictions etc.
959476
Because the paper money is printed on, is totally worthless.  THe money is representative of gold stored in US treasury vaults.  If the money is not backed by an equal value of gold, it becomes worthless.\n\nThe mexican's tried something similar with the Peso. \n\nIf you print more money than you have the gold to back up, the money itself becomes worthless.
1178517
It appears there is nothing that can't be bought!!\n\nWhat concerns me is this kind of unreasonable behavior\n\n\n"According to the U.S. Treasury Department, America's first 42 Presidents, from George Washington (1789) to Bill Clinton (2000), borrowed a combined total of $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions. From 2000 to 2006, the Bush White House has borrowed $1.05 trillion alone. Yes, that means we have borrowed in the last 5 years what we had previously borrowed in the first 211 years of our country."
64719
This is a really WIDE-ranging question, and it's practically impossible to give you a good answer that's practical for use. Fed Reserve prints money, essentially, "increasing the money supply" (counterfeiting) on demand. It is private, yet govt controlled. The govt simply placed it in "private hands" so they could get away with their political sleight of hand without having to worry about the Constitution. The IMF, of which the US is a member with about 17% of the clout, loans federal reserve funny money and usurious rates, then, eventually, puts anyone small (only large companies can afford usurious rates) out of business, out of house, home, food, and everything else. Ask Jamaica. The federal govt, in taking us off the gold standard, has sentenced the US to eventual economic death.\n\nGo to the web and search for Liberty Dollar. You can trade $10 in federal funny money for real silver, and $1 for silver certificates backed by real silver. If enough of us used this, we could make the US financially solvent again, over the years.
1055363
The US is in debt because the system is full of waste, special interest groups, we give to much away to other countries, politicians are buying votes and support by giving their support for projects that are not needed like the multimillion dollar bridge to nowhere project in Alaska and etc...  If politicians would spend our tax dollars like it was coming out of their bank account we would not have this problem.
702322
Because they don't want the American people to know exactly how much money the US is spending on the war and what they are spending it on.  I saw a "60 Minutes" story about how the US has "misplaced" $800 million in Iraq....
1002836
We have been doing this since we de-coupled the dollar from gold in 1971.  Actually, to be accurate, the private bank called the Federal Reserve has been doing this.  When they set interest rates low, more dollars are borrowed, meaning more dollars are needed to be put in the system, so they order it up from the Treasury and print away.\n\nIf you compare the price of precious metals and real estate, two items that have fixed "value" unless something big and artificial happens to them, then you will notice that they have increased in value almost 1.5x since Bush took office.  We have had inflation of nearly 50% in the last 4-5 years.  The Fed stopped making public knowledge the M3 indicator two months ago, which is the number of dollars in circulation in the world.  This was another trick to curb inflation...if nobody knows how many dollars there are, they can't adjust the rate of exchange based on any hard number anymore.
67117
The amount of money is constantly fluctuating.\n\nEach country regulates its own currency.  If you print too much, the value of your currency will decrease.  The value of the money is based on the country's productivity.  The USA has the biggest GNP at $11.75 trillion.  A country's currency will go up or down in value based on the actions in that country.  If it prints more money, its value will drop in comparison to other countries that are not printing out more money.
46783
Only the Federal Reserve can authorize the creation of new money.  Today, however, most money is 'created' using open-market operations, and thus does not physically exist.