Keith Evans
2 min readDec 10, 2020

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Canada, like most modern nations, creates its own fiat currency on demand and without restraint from revenue. It also only accepts debt denominated in the currency it creates at will. As a currency "issuer" its monetary function and affect on your economy are in no way relatable to the budgeting process of currency "users", such as individuals or even states/provinces.

Its deficit spending is the sole source of "net" monetary assets that can net retire private debt or be net saved your nation has. That debt is an accounting entity only and should not be confused with any bonds or other investment instruments it makes available.

This means it can never involuntarily fail to pay any obligation denominated in that currency, making its "credit rating" comically moot. It can also afford anything that is available for sale priced in its currency without incurring inflation, including labor the private sector rejects.

Those instruments do not fund anything and their proceeds are destroyed as an accounting function by the debt that created them. One cannot borrow what doesn't yet exist. They are a promise/contract to recreate the monetary assets upon maturity with a small interest dividend and are totally irrelevant to the government's ability to create new money in the present.

Those big scary numbers simply track the movement of money between public and private sectors and allow compliance with spreadsheet accounting practice used worldwide. They are not a "mortgage" type debt on taxpayers, but the accumulated savings of the private sector derived from commerce with its government.

The bottom line of your paranoid rant is that Canadians have too much in savings? If your government did function like a business, as you are so anxious to imply it should, its debt would represent shareholder equity.

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Keith Evans
Keith Evans

Written by Keith Evans

Meandering to a different drummer.

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