Can you explain the &quot;money from the future&quot; thing?<p>The only money that I know is a) a metal coin and b) a contract. Now, the contract naturally deals with future expectations as does the stock market. The stock market, however, does not create money. It distributes money.<p>One problem that arises in this regard is making contracts about money (which is other contracts). When the expectations fail, the contracts fail and if the contract was used to create money, you now have a problem. The money supply ultimately shrinks and the contracts about money start to fail. This is usually the point where the government announces big spending programs to lessen the pain.<p>You may ask where does the government get that money?<p>There are two fundamentally different methods.<p>1) from people who accumulated money. They give it to the government and the government spends it. In turn the government needs more money to pay those people back.<p>Does the money supply increase this way? Kind of, but not really. It just helps to bring existing money back into circulation but does not create new money. It is therefore only a temporary fix. One day the government will stop paying those people back.<p>2) The government just creates new money. They can do this if they control the currency (sorry, Greece). The dangerous part about this is that it is so easy to create new money once the dam has been broken and this new money isn&#x27;t backed up with value. When this goes out of hand it leads to hyperinflation (as in Germany 1920s) where the currency is devalued.<p>By having a really strong and reasonable government, you can force 1) at low cost and control 2) without going overboard. China might be in a position where they can do that for a long time.