A Conundrum

Let's assume you have credit card debt-- not much of a stretch is it?  Every month you send your bank a check but the balance doesn't change much.  You study the bank statements and realize every month you are being charged interest because you didn't fully pay off the total amount owed.  Worrying about paying off this debt given the high rate of interest on the outstanding balance keeps you up half the night.

Next morning you're browsing through Craigslist looking for a used economy car when you spot an unusual ad.  It reads:  Money Printing Machine, Produces Genuine Dollar Bills, Make an Offer, Cheap.   You instinctively know this is too good to be true.  Nevertheless, you have an epiphany:  If you did have a money printing machine, you would never pay interest on borrowed money again.  There would be no need to borrow money in the first place as you could always print enough money to pay your expenses.  You reason, give me the authority to print money and rest assured I will never again pay interest.  But what about the government and it's money printing machine?
  
Though not universally accepted as constitutional or wise, the view that the ability to print paper money is a necessary and proper power of the federal government is widely held.  So here's the conundrum:  If the United States government has the power to print money, why does the government chose to issue treasury bonds and pay interest to obtain dollars (aka Federal Reserve Notes)?  Put another way, why does the government chose to pay interest on money that is created out of thin air? 

A standard answer is that government bureaucrats and politicians have no discipline and can't be trusted.  We need the steely resolution of the bankers to save us from economic ruin.  But Thomas Edison once remarked ..."if the Nation can issue a dollar bond it can issue a dollar bill.  Both are promises to pay, but one fattens the usurer and the other helps the People".  A federal deficit of more than $14 trillion shows just how dearly we have paid for so little discipline.  The outcome of the government's arrangement with the bankers has been so horrendously destructive, it makes the rationale offered for the arrangement totally implausible.

Our government cast it's lot with the usurers.  Was making a different choice possible then?  Is a different choice possible now?  To conclude that there are real choices available on issues of this magnitude, one has to believe the United States government is sovereign.  Are those we elect and normally regard as the government's leaders truly this country's supreme authorities?  Or has the policy and decision making apparatus been usurped?  A $14 trillion dollar government debt makes me wonder who's calling the shots.