If money can be printed why do our government borrows money from other country?

[DiMarxist]

OP government can't print money that they don't have.This is like saying that you are spending money that you don't have for government to print any money they must have such money either via trade and investments or even through borrowing. That's when governments can print the money but government can't just wake up and print money that they don't work for or is not even in their national reserve. It will not make any sense if all governments all over the world will start to print money without control this will lead to anarchy in the world.

[Cryptomultiplier]

Is that right or they are trying to maintain economic value?
What do you think?

If you look at the history of cases of excessive printing of money, this was done post-World War I by Germany, what happened was extreme inflation, the currency was worthless, this is the same if other countries do the same thing.

Countries have limits on printing money, they cannot print as they please, the risks can be fatal, one of which is causing severe inflation, countries really have to pay attention and balance goods with money in circulation so that economic stability is stable. too much money in circulation automatically weakens the foreign exchange rate, this can trigger imported goods to skyrocket, overall printing large amounts of money by one country can worsen that country's economy or finances.

The government functions to make a country stable both economically, structurally, and otherwise, hence why it must be deliberate in its actions to ensure that the working systems of its country does not fail or the people lose trust in it.

Printing more money can be quite expensive to think about it, but this is just a tip of the iceberg, because printing too much can cause the currency to be devalued, can cause serious hyperinflation like it happened in Zimbabwe or Weimar Germany and those who have savings in the bank would count it as worthless, hence the need for the decentralized currency system which is Bitcoin Incase one intends to hold for long and don't want to experience these calamities that can be orchestrated by hyperinflation or devaluation of the fiat currency, occasioned by so much borrowing or over printing of currency to compensate.

[abhiseshakana]

I am still shocked to know that even when money can be printed as much as possible, countries, nations goes after each others to borrow money but yet they can on their own print money instead of having to go borrow and leaving the nation indebted other nations. Just as for instance our country do borrows money from China.

Is that right or they are trying to maintain economic value?
What do you think?

I read and follow discussion about MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) and based on their thinking especially Michael Hudson, that goverment has control on monetary aspect, government can push central bank to print as much as government need for economic growth and country development no need to use foreign debt. They claimed that US and China already adopt and practice MMT for decades What i see in China as long as there are creative / inovative product, 100% using local material, open up employment especially export oriented, goverment will support and facilitate its project. China printing money based on productive project, especially which can bring USD come in to China trade balance. Lets take example, China printing RMB for penny project manufacture, china existing manufacture get additional local demand, new manufacture exported its product worldwide, government give incentive to exporter, China get USD for export payment settlement. With practicing MMT suggestion, a country shouldn't need foreign direct investment.

[uchegod-21]

I used to think this way as a child, but now I understand clearly that borrowing can also be a government economic strategy. That is if used well.

I also thought of that when I was zero knowledge about how economy works. I thought that borrowing is a bad thing but that's a way to at least fund some good infrastructure and programs that the government is about to do. But not all borrowing is good especially if the country is already in debt. And that's why those countries that have less to no debt(if there is) are having a good signs that they're healthy economically and they're stable compared to the ones that have been borrowing because they have to give favor to the lender in any way they can.

Yea,I already made it clear in my post that borrowing can be useful if used well.  Most countries that are swimming in debts and huge economic instability never had clear plans for the money they borrowed. The rule about borrowing is that the money borrowed should be able to yield returns to pay off the capital and the interest within the stipulated period agreed by both the borrower and the lender. What this means is that, governments should only borrow for productive projects, not borrowing to service an existing debt or finance a recurrent expenditure like most governments do. Bad use of the borrowing privilege makes borrowing bad, just the same way excessive printing of money is bad.

[Jateng]

I am still shocked to know that even when money can be printed as much as possible, countries, nations goes after each others to borrow money but yet they can on their own print money instead of having to go borrow and leaving the nation indebted other nations. Just as for instance our country do borrows money from China.

Is that right or they are trying to maintain economic value?
What do you think?

Everyone knows that if a country needs money they print money but if they are not printing money but borrowing from other countries then some problems will arise in this too. This is the reason why they borrow money from other countries because the country runs by keeping everything in balance. Although it can print money itself this will increase economic problems and people will face difficulties in meeting their expenses.If the government borrows money then the people also benefit from it because if it does not borrow and prints money itself then the people will not have to face personal problems

[slapper]

The short answer is that printing money destroys the value of money. The longer answer is way messier & has to do with who actually controls the global financial system.

When you print currency without economic growth to back it up with, it has the same effect as diluting the value of every unit of currency that's already in circulation.

Borrowing from China or whoever else implies getting currency that's already valued in international markets. You can actually use it to purchase things with. But the cost is sovereignty. Debt gives creditors influence over your domestic policy.

This system is to keep poor countries in their chain. They need infrastructure, education, health care. Can't print their way to it without hyperinflation. Can't borrow and have strings tied to it. Meanwhile rich countries print whenever they want and they call it quantitative easing, somehow that's fine.

The question isn't really why do governments borrow as opposed to print. It's why we've set up a global economic structure where most of the countries don't have real monetary sovereignty to begin with. The game is rigged before anybody has even sat down to play.

[Zigabel]

OP needs understand that the value of the money isn't actually in those printed notes you see, if you keep printing money, it is only  a matter of time and you will see how less of a value that printed notes will be as soon as hyper inflation sets in, the rate of productivity in that country is going to decline so badly because people are not going to see the need to work since  they have cash in excess supply, value chains will be broken as it will be substituted for some individuals who now have the currency and believe they can afford anything they want so they need not help the value chains reamin functional since it's of no really direct impact as perceived by them.

If a society is very productive and Industrious to the point of certain level of independence, they may need not really borrow because they have their currency strengthen to the point they will not need a ton of it to get value for goods and services so other will clamour for that so powerful currency that embodies value and so they will borrow from these countries  to build their own economic system while maintaining a certain value range for their own currency and building strength for it too. This isn't a true fact from and economic point of view as I'm not an expert economist but this is just my taughts into a possible reason why.

[Fortify]

I am still shocked to know that even when money can be printed as much as possible, countries, nations goes after each others to borrow money but yet they can on their own print money instead of having to go borrow and leaving the nation indebted other nations. Just as for instance our country do borrows money from China.

Is that right or they are trying to maintain economic value?
What do you think?

The idea that you can print money is fairly exclusive to lots of big and trusted countries that have a currency in demand, but you do risk undermining the value of your currency if you do too much. It actually greatly benefits the citizens of the country that prints money, as long as the currency is not devalued too much, because it inflates away the debt that their government sold previously. China has actually stopped buying a lot of debt from places like the USA because of their unpredictable economic policies and trade wars, it actually makes the US an unreliable seller and is why we are seeing things like a gold price spike.

[Ucy]

The borrowers need to produce enough good products to compensate for what they spent the loan on, otherwise the world or society pays the loan for them via inflation even if they pay back with money printed "out of thin air"

Money shouldn't just be printed and spent without being backed by solution provided in the past by the owner otherwise the money could become a problem.
Money is mostly use to reward people for value or solution they provide  If no solution is provided and yet money is rewarded, the amount rewarded is subtracted from the overall value of the currency, and it loses value. It lost value because someone took value away from it without giving something in return, and this reduces the supply of product or service paid for with the money, at abnormal pace.  If you print $1, 000, 000 and give to someone to spend on whatever he likes, and he spends it on products that's worth that amount, the demand for the products will become abnormally high if people are not working hard enough to increase its supply to compensate for the abnormally high demand, or if supply is getting exhausted from source & can't be replenished fast enough. But if the $1000000 was earned via hardwork, it wouldn't be spent too early/quickly than supply can handle and therefore not leading to abnormally high demand.

It's better to borrow money than getting it printed out of thin air because the borrowed money has value as it's backed by hardwork of people it's borrowed from. They already solved problem that helped increase supply of products/services somewhere, and lend the money to another person who are expected to spend it prudently on their behalf before repaying back.

So, money should go to people who deserve it, but this needs to happen naturally, like how people who mine Bitcoin compete to solve problem to earn bitcoin reward. And when they earn the bitcoins, they value it because it's earned via hardwork, and this makes Bitcoin more value

[passwordnow]

I used to think this way as a child, but now I understand clearly that borrowing can also be a government economic strategy. That is if used well.

I also thought of that when I was zero knowledge about how economy works. I thought that borrowing is a bad thing but that's a way to at least fund some good infrastructure and programs that the government is about to do. But not all borrowing is good especially if the country is already in debt. And that's why those countries that have less to no debt(if there is) are having a good signs that they're healthy economically and they're stable compared to the ones that have been borrowing because they have to give favor to the lender in any way they can.

Yea,I already made it clear in my post that borrowing can be useful if used well.  Most countries that are swimming in debts and huge economic instability never had clear plans for the money they borrowed. The rule about borrowing is that the money borrowed should be able to yield returns to pay off the capital and the interest within the stipulated period agreed by both the borrower and the lender. What this means is that, governments should only borrow for productive projects, not borrowing to service an existing debt or finance a recurrent expenditure like most governments do. Bad use of the borrowing privilege makes borrowing bad, just the same way excessive printing of money is bad.

Yes, they can only borrow to produce more infrastructures for the growth of the nation. And this has become the style of the lenders and that's a required thing that they have a proposed project before allowing a country to borrow from them. I'm just confused that one of the richest countries in the world which is the USA has got a lot of debt and they're drowning in it. While the other better economy countries provided to have no debt at all.

[el kaka22]

Inflation. That is the only reason, if you print more money than you are not paying your debt, you are just making bigger debt for the later, but if you borrow then you are not doing that. I agree with all that said inflation because they are right. I would rather get 10 billion dollars loan as a nation, then print out 10 billion dollars.

Just check the covid period where everyone printed money and how we have been dealing with inflation for nearly half a decade now and still not at a place where we want to, not at a place where we were before the covid period and printing the money. So it's clear that we are not seeing the benefits just yet, and we need to make sure that we can see it later on. Borrowing is not a bad thing if you use the money right.

[Razmirraz]

I am still shocked to know that even when money can be printed as much as possible, countries, nations goes after each others to borrow money but yet they can on their own print money instead of having to go borrow and leaving the nation indebted other nations. Just as for instance our country do borrows money from China.

Is that right or they are trying to maintain economic value?
What do you think?

The government can print as much money as it wants because they have full control to do so, but that doesn't mean they can print money without limits. The reason behind the government still borrowing money from other countries is because if the government prints money beyond the limit, the value of money will decrease and inflation will increase. Borrowing money from other countries does not mean that the government is increasing the burden on its country, this action is taken to help maintain economic stability and prevent financial crises, the money can also be used for long-term investments such as building infrastructure, improving the quality of education and other sectors that can increase economic growth.

[YellowSwap]

We normal people are the ones seeing country's debt as a problem, it's never a problem because this is just one of those ways to keep your country's money valuable rather than printing money only for inflation to attack very fast. Remember, even rich people use debt to their advantages, debt has it's advantages.