pull down to refresh

am I thinking about this wrong?

Yes-ish. Two control questions to get you thinking, Socratic style:

  • How come the Fed balance sheet has shrunk for four years straight, and a total of 2 trillion? (Minus the last six months little blip) in the same periods that the red bar have been record-large (excepting rona years). That's very odd if money printing is covering
  • How can the national debt keep growing like crazy if the large deficit — which is the difference between gov revenue and expenses — is covered by money printing?

also, charts like yours aren't too helpful in understanding what's going on because there's no economic connection between the two: As in deficit is just the negative number that's left over after calculating [gov revenue] minus [gov expenses]


inflation -> bigger cap gains, higher wages, more tax revenue

Yes, that's generally true. How big is that effect? Nobody can (really) tell, so we're back to where we started... I guess I just don't believe that most/a large portion of gov revenues + treasury issuance are due to money printing (explicitly, or roundabout) alone.