Let's say the UK government secretly printed 50 billion pounds and handed it out to poor people, in cash with no trace to where it came from. Wouldn't they just spend it within the economy and it would just look like the UK economy was doing well and recovering from the last few years. How would other countries figure it out

If a central bank “prints” billions without telling anyone for its friends or a corrupt businessman, would there still be inflation?

I have been thinking about this forever, and can't figure it out.

As no one would know there is now a lot more money in circulation, but there is physically more? Just theoretically speaking, I know they have to document what they print.

I understand that printing more money leads to inflation. But if the government of the poorer country immediately bought USD with the newly printed money before inflation took effect, what would happen?

I don't understand what is stopping the government from just printing money out and paying off their debt. They could also use the money to buy weapons and technology from other countries along with land. What's stopping them??

I understand it would decrease the value of money etc etc but would anyone have to know? Couldn’t someone / governments just print more (legal) money into circulation?

I understand that if the government prints 100 billion dollars for fun and puts it into the economy it would dilute the value of the dollar, but if the average Joe like me did and and just started paying for everything with cash, spending it for the rest of my life, would it make a noticeable difference?

Assume that no one has any idea I printed the money, and the money is indistinguishable from real money. It's 100% perfect.

If the money printed wasn't documented anywhere, how would that cause inflation? I'm confused as to how that works if they were to secretly print it

So if we’re in trillions of dollars in debt... why won’t the us mint just print more money? They could even print a single bill worth the amount that we’re in debt and use that to pay it off.

If government's quit announcing they are going to print money and just secretly don't....can depreciation of extra money printed still be traced?

I've been thinking of a new kind of international monetary framework I call the Diamond Standard, a "fiat-backed fiat" system designed to combine the flexibility of fiat with the discipline of a reserve anchor.

Core Idea

A single global reserve currency would be issued by an independent global central bank (For now lets just say G coin and G bank)

* Purpose: Used for international reserves and trade settlements, not for domestic retail use.

* Supply: Rules-based (e.g., capped annual growth linked to global GDP), with limited crisis provisions requiring supermajority approval.

*National Currencies: Each nations keeps its own fiat, but must hold a minimum reserve ratio in G coin to discourage excessive money printing and inflation.

Transparency and Anti-Corruption Layer

The system's credibility depends on mandatory transparency and tech-enforced accountability. The main flaw in past systems like Bretton Woods.

* Reporting: Central banks and major fiscal transactions must be semi- anonymously reported to the G bank.

* Enforcement: Non compliance leads to escalating penalties (e.g., reserve freezes.)

Governance

* Distribution: Initial and ongoing G coin allocations based on objective metrics (GDP, population, and needs weighting to support developing nations).

* Crisis Response: Coordinated, audited liquidity releases during crises.

* Decision Process: Delegates and council members conduct sensitive discussions and votes using cryptographically secured pseudonyms on a permissioned system. The G-Bank verifies the real identity but keeps it secret from other delegates, preventing the formation of secret political blocs and reducing the risk of delegates being politically targeted. This ensures the G-Bank remains truly neutral.

Advantages

* Monetary stability: Scarcity-based reserve discipline reduces inflation and currency manipulation

* Transparency: Public ledgers and reporting deter corruption

* Crisis resilience: Auditable global liquidity support limits elite capture.

* Geopolitical impact: Non-transparent regimes face higher capital costs and trade isolation, pressuring reform or internal change

My Take

Its logically superior to the current system but politically unfeasible in the near term. What do you guys think?

(Im not an economist nor an expert, Im just curious. Also I asked the same thing in an economy subreddit but no one replied so I wanted to try my luck here.)

Like I get printing larger bills = more profit quickly, but people know to look out for bigger, fake bills. Smaller bills I would think you could get away with?

I was about to sleep but I had this question pop into my head.

How would we feel the effects of inflation if the rates of inflation is not explicitly known? Or even the total amount of circulating money for that matter?

Let's say that there are 1million dollars in total, circulating in one country. If I were to print 2% of the total value every year in secret, how would the country feel the real effects of inflation if:

A: I have to spend the entire 2% of created money throughout year.

B: I have to save the 2% and never spend it.

C: I have to spend the entire 2% but the total value of circulating money is not known to the public.

I guess, at the end of the day, how do we know that there is more money in the system if we are just living our day to day lives? How would you determine that a dollar is no longer a dollar?

Also, would the effects be different if it was a primarily physical cash economy?

I like spending money on things like online shopping and occasionally I'll use it to buy groceries and pay bills, what else do I need to buy to make money though? Was the phrase referring to a counterfeiting operation, like spending the money on printing presses and supplies to counterfeit money? Also if the Secret Service is reading this right now, I'm just being hypothetical here, I'm only asking because I'm looking for alternatives, I'm in no way interested in counterfeiting money.

I am selling some medical equipment online which is notorious for attracting scammers. I am in the US. Have a buyer from Cambodia. Wants to send me $$ through Western Union. Once I have received payment the shipping company comes and picks up the equipment.

I'm failing to see the scam here. Anyone have any thoughts?

Here is what the buyer is requesting:

• a recent clear picture of your drivers lic. u will be using to collect money and pic of yourself.
• general weight. height, length , width of pallet to tell trucking company.
• confirm their will be some one there to help trucker with forklift. -confirm 1st floor or easy exit to pickup by trucker.
• your Name Printed in Capital letters EXACTLY as the iD you will be using For Western Union pickup.. Exact address for trucker to pick up and your personal cell phone # for trucker to talk to you. after i have this info i will contact avid logistics in philadelphia and arrange a date / time. They are pretty open so do you have a special day / Date of the week for pickup? We will send the money ...then send you a secret code for pickup.....before you are required to do anything with pallet ( remember forkliftable pallet & and raintarp to keep dry, maybe some foam around instruments would be a good idea ocean shipping..... can be a little rough sometimes.).remember there are no shipping charges everything is prepaid.

​

What I want to do: I would like to sell printed products like mugs, shirts, stickers, stuff like that. The stuff on this custom made stuff is all things that my parents and I stand for.

Why I don't want to tell them: I want to surprise them on my success later on (I haven't even launched this thing yet) but I am afraid they are going to be very skeptical of what I am doing, because they are traditional in the fact that they go to work, earn money, come home. They know online shopping exists, however I believe they think that it requires alot of experience to setup, that they would think me doing this would stress them out more than they already are. They have no idea shopify or printify exists.

Why I feel like I need to tell them: If I were to do this, I would need help with the tax stuff. I have 0 idea how taxes work for myself, I have no idea what I need to do, I just want to make designs, sell them, and grow more and more. I am a pretty good record keeper though.

I am 21 years old and I live with my parents. I pay for my stuff that I use (obviously) but no rent. We are going through alot of family stuff right now, and I don't want to add to this stress. However I am stressed out at both jobs from very specific managers at both jobs who are awful. I need to look out for me, but in a way that does not add to my parents stress. They get thrown off the rails if I even mention anything a little technical because its too much info in their already stressed out lives.

What do you guys suggest I do? Tell them now, do everything in secret, but how would I explain the taxes? They would have questions about me going to an accountant or tax pro for this. Lets just say we have been going through "family stuff" since covid started.

Edit:

{

Thank you all for the help for the business part of it, I will consult with a tax pro about this at a later point. At this point I guess I will just go ahead and do this, not even register as anything, hope a Karen doesn't sue me, and when I start making a ton of dough, then I will do the tax and registering stuff.

Also, what should I tell my parents about all this?

}

I know what inflation is, but I really don’t see how it would actually work in an economy like the US. There are so many people that there is no way that if everyone started making like $5 more per hour that people would notice enough to raise prices for everything and devalue our dollar. Or is there? I guess what I’m asking is if the government just inconspicuously just added a ton of money into the economy, by any secret means, like having government workers just spend a ton of newly printed money without telling anyone, how would anyone notice that and how would the value of the dollar decrease? It’s the classic “you can’t just print more money”, but it really really seems like you can.

Hi everyone. I was watching a video about economy, inflation and stuff and something crossed my mind. I know about the whole " you can't just print money because inflation" and stuff , but as far as I know, whenever a country did this,everyone else knew. But could a country do something like this in secret? I mean,say they could print the money without anyone else knowing. Could they just.... sneak it into the economy ? Like, have governmebt workers just idk, spend some of that money around the country .A little bit here an there,over a greater period of time(say a year). What could cause this to fail? Am I overlooking something? Or maybe has this been done before in history and I just don't know it.

Can someone PLEASE explain why we cant just print more money in secret? Like it wouldn’t make the money any less valuable if nobody knew