Money

[Coldfusion]

Who decides how much money the Royal Mint can print each day/week? What stops our country from just printing loads and loads of money to make our country the richest in the world?

[sft42]

The Bank of England controls the printing and minting rates....as for the second part of your question....Inflation. If you flood the country with loads of currency all you manage to acieve is to artifiacally drive up the price of all commodities....Imagine if a loaf is 40p and the average wage is �200....if you double the amount of money in circulation and give an average wage of �400 all that will happen is that the farmer has to charge more for his grain cause his workers need more money, the baker has to pay more wages, so the loaf will end up at at least 80p....If your interested in this phenomena look at the german economy right before WW2.

[Coldfusion]

Wow, Thanks for that

[darth vader]

additional - bizarrely some countries have actually tried doing this (printing money) to prop up their economy only to see their currency plummet and the idea fail (not surprisingly) - Turkey springs to mind (i am aware they are going to devalue/revalue their own currency soon as there is currently about a squillion lira to the pound)

[bernardo]

When sft42 says "right before WW", that presumably refers to 1923, when the hyperinflation culminated in the exchange rate being 4,200,000,000,000 marks in one dollar. The 1923 hyperinflation in Germany is the most famous one, but there have been various others, including Greece and Hungary in 1946, and Serbia at the end of 1993. When I was a coin-collector as a child, I bought a one-million-billion pengo note from Hungary 1946. It cost 85p. (I am still not sure whether this means billion with 9 or 12 zeroes). And in Darth Vader's answer, a squillion is currently c. 2,300,000 (I remember when it was only a few hundred).

[archbishop]

As it happens the USA is doing precisely that now.But having the strongest economy in the world helps and as the Dollar is the common trade currency all it does is screw up weak economies ie The EU.Fortunately we(UK) are not in the Euro and have a strong economy.

[lisaj]

If you restrict your view to just the FX market, then it's just simple supply and demand (money is after all, just a thing). If you increase supply, the value falls. Funnily enough, the converse if not true. Increased demand with constant supply should, in theory, drive up the price. However, we have an endless thirst for money and it's value isn't affected. ;-)

[lisaj]

And all this reminds me of Hitchhiker's Guide, where they have leaves as their currency and everyone is filthy rich... However, it cost an entire forest to buy a loaf of bread.... I must dig out that book again. :-)

[michaelcrick]

The decisions are made here ..www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/