Dollar Scholar Asks: Why Can't the Government Just Print More Money? (2024)

This is an excerpt from Dollar Scholar, the Money newsletter where news editor Julia Glum teaches you the modern money lessons you NEED to know. Don't miss the next issue! Sign up at money.com/subscribe and join our community of 160,000+ Scholars.

Here at Dollar Scholar HQ (my apartment), we (I) firmly believe there are no stupid questions (because I ask them all the time). Remember when I was freaking out about going to jail for accidentally insider trading? Or worrying my future boyfriend will be broke? Or wondering if my Ocean Beauty personal checks worked the same as plain ones?

It’s with that nonjudgmental spirit that I endeavor today to answer one of the internet’s favorite financial questions: Why can’t we just print more money?

Things seem pretty dire right now. The United States has run up against its debt ceiling, which is the limit it’s allowed to borrow to finance its obligations. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen keeps putting out increasingly dramatic statements about the impending “economic catastrophe,” and the Congressional Budget Office is warning that the government is set to “run out of cash sometime between July and September.”

Commenters online think they have the solution. If the government doesn’t have enough money, and the government is also in charge of making money, why doesn’t it simply… create more? Wouldn’t that fix the problem?