# Government prints money to pay debts - why bad

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-prints-money-to-pay-debts-why-bad/220510>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [December 22, 2003, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-prints-money-to-pay-debts-why-bad/220510 "2003-12-22T20:13:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\
**Post date:** [December 27, 2003, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-prints-money-to-pay-debts-why-bad/220510/41 "2003-12-27T19:06:12Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by habs \*  
> So would doing the opposite lead to what I suspect? For example, if the government somehow “destroyed” or eliminated a trillion dollars from the money supply, would prices _drop_ across the board for goods and services? Is this how deflation starts? What actually would be the effects of doing something like this? \*\*

IIRC, deflation mostly occurs when companies overproduce in a bad economy. Basically when there’s a surplus of goods and companies can’t get rid of them.

Deflation is generally considered bad because it becomes harder to pay off debt. IOW, your debt level increases due to interest faster than you can pay it off.

wevets - I don’t believe money is considered a commodity because it comes from a single supplier - the government and US banks.  
As opposed to say, oil or gold which is the same product regardless of who supplies it.

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