Brendan Greeley

uniquely among major economies.

The United States has tolerated that because it's kind of good for us to have dollars that are on the balance sheets of foreign banks sloshing around the world, creating a market for lots of dollar-denominated instruments like American bonds, American treasuries, American stocks.

You could.

But banks have a commercial incentive.

So we're still talking about banks.

They don't want their dollars to blow up.

Yes, absolutely.

I mean, Susan, you sound like a reasonable person.

I don't think you're going to go rogue.

But a state could go rogue.

But what's actually happening is private banks are doing this.

And commercial banks, private banks...

have an incentive in making sure that their own dollars don't blow up.

There's something very important that's another part of this, which is that the Federal Reserve will, from time to time when there's a crisis, actually lend dollars from its own balance sheet to these private banks abroad.

I know this sounds insane, but this happened in 2008.

It happened again in 2020.

Two financial crises.

The Fed actually steps in and protects these dollars.

So, yes, a foreign government, if it were printing up its own dollars, could absolutely go rogue and inflate the dollar.

What's actually happening is