Looking Backward from the Tricentennial

Chapter Sixteen

Alone in the parlor, enveloped in silence, tingling slightly from the whiskey he and Ray had tossed down, Julian began to relax. What a day it had been! Meeting Reverend Shaver in person and hearing his assertions that natural rights were an epic con game. Reconnecting with Edith Bartlett—Edith Leete, he corrected himself again—and walking the streets of Washington. And now he waited for an economist to take holographic form and teach him more about the monetary system of the tricentennial. It was superbly surreal, and he began to chuckle.

"What's so funny?" Ray asked as he entered the room.

Julian inhaled deeply and slouched back in the chair. "Just thinking about everything that happened today."

"How was your walk?" Ray asked.

He sat back up. "It was incredible. You really ended poverty," Julian said. "Everybody said so, but I didn't really believe it until I saw it with my own eyes."

"I didn't personally have anything to do with it," Ray laughed.

"Your mom, she was a delegate, so she sort of had something to do with it, right?" Julian frowned. "But she wouldn't tell me how we borrowed all those trillions."

Ray's grin would have made the Cheshire cat proud. "You have one more minute to figure it out."

"I also asked her why it took fifty years for me to be thawed out," Julian said. "The reporter was quizzing me, and I didn't have an answer."

"What did she say?" the doctor asked, humor draining from his face.

Julian hesitated. I was married. What would we have told Ray? As a boy, had Ray picked up on Edith's internal struggle? The appearance of a red indicator light in the corner of the room warned him Teara Harper was about to arrive. "I didn't really get a straight answer," he said.

"That sounds about right," Ray agreed.

The economist flickered into one of the chairs across from Julian, smiling broadly. "Thanks for meeting with me again," Julian said, touching his hands together.

"My pleasure," Teara replied. After acknowledging Ray, she turned straight to business. "Now, you were going to figure out how the United States borrowed more than thirty trillion dollars after you were born, despite the fact that in 1992 the entire economy only produced around six trillion worth of goods and services." She looked at him expectantly.

Julian squirmed under her gaze. "I don't know. My first thought was that we borrowed it from other countries, but Ray pointed out that any dollars they loaned us would have had to come from the United States in the first place. People talked about the government printing money, but if that were the case, why would they need to borrow it? And I doubt the wealthy had been sitting on thirty trillion, waiting to loan it out."

Teara chuckled. "Oh, people borrowed much more. Household debt was another twenty trillion: mortgages, credit cards, student loans, auto loans."

Julian tossed his hands in frustration. "I give up, Teara. Where did it come from?"

Her eyes twinkled. "The answer I was looking for," she said, "is that it was all made up."

"Made up?" Julian echoed. "By who?"

"Who could create new dollars?"

"This is what I don't understand," Julian replied, shaking his head. "It would have to be the government printing dollars, right? But then how could the United States borrow from itself?"

"If you wanted to borrow money to buy a house, how would you do it?"

"From a bank," Julian said.

"And where would the bank get the money?"