The neoliberal era has made humanity progressively crazy when it comes to currency matters. At the moment, this trend seems to have reached new heights of absurdity. I note that the US government is now buying up its own debt with more debt as a cover for the stupidity that its President and his lackeys have launched on the World. By substituting longer-term debt with short-term Treasury bills, the composition of bond demand changes (higher demand for long-term debt – government induced), which lowers the yields. But the debt level overall remains unchanged. This is different to quantitative easing because the Treasury buyback scheme is not facilitated through the central bank creating new bank reserves, but it equally as absurd. And in Australia, the media is going crazy about the ‘journey to $A1 trillion debt’ as the August bond auctions issued $A4 billion in new issuance in early August. Frothing lines quoting that this means every man, woman, and child (and I presume those who have other gender affiliations) owe $A36,000 up from $A35,700 and that ‘taxpayers’ have to spend about $A30 billion a year now servicing the debt abound. The Australian government responds – buying into the horror story line – that the debt might be a trillion but it is still much lower than that of other English-speaking nations. As if that matters. And, last time I checked, I didn’t owe any money on outstanding federal government bond liabilities and I certainly have never paid any ‘debt servicing’ charges, but I am a taxpayer. The problem is that these fantastical media stories and actions by the crazies in the US government send a signal of impending doom to the public which then complies with all sorts of bad policy moves.