rehctub,
I think you have it a bit backwards.

The government doesn't just "print money"and back it up in bonds.

It sells Bonds on the market with an interest guarantee. Investors buy the Bonds and this is the money the government "borrows".

While our interest rates are comparatively high and our economy is stable, the Bonds are in demand by overseas investors and so we appear to be "borrowing money from overseas".

Wasn't it Pauline Hnason who suggested that all the government has to do is print however much money it needs anytime it wants?

rache,who gave the private banking system the right to create from nothing all the money to equal our increases in growth + inflation?

Govt has a function in money creation since this represents our increases in productivity.It lowers our tax burden and creates infrastructure debt free from the private banksters counterfeiting system of debt money creation.

Hi,
Tell a simple country boy like me If the banks can line up cap in hand and borrow from the reserve bank whatever they want at the base interest rate why the hell can't the average guy in the street wanting to build a home or finance a business simply by pass the banks and their inflated interest rates and borrow direct from the sourse, the Reserve bank?
CG

There seems to be a not very transparent view of what goes on in the money system.
I have seen graphs that suggest our govt borrowings are a smallish
percentage of GDP, but all other dept is a very high percentage of GDP.
The government recently passed legislation to increase the borrowing
to $250 billion. They recently passed the previous $220 billion limit.
Each week they put over $1 billion of bonds up for auction.
This where the $150 a day you hear about comes from.
The government pretends this is not government debt.
However, someone holds those bonds and will eventually want their money back.

This sounds very much like Greece all over again.
On November the 16th a number of Greek govt bonds become due and they
do not have the money to pay them out !
Hmmm

Bazz the figures of Accumulated Deficits $ 70 billion + unfunded super $ 100 billion + Govt Bonds $ 250 billion = $420 billion.Is that for all Govts ? I know our total debt is over $ 1000 billion and that is not good.This would mean that Govt accounts for almost half our debt.

Hmmm, yes well I have read that it is $700 billion.