Plus, if we do run into trouble, we can always unprint the money later via taxation.

All the US money (bonds and dollars) we have were "printed." Every year that the Federal gov't runs a deficit, it prints that amount of new money. And yet, no inflation crises materializes.

Which Americans? Inflation may cost our wealthy creditors, but it will help the much, much larger part of us who have mortgages, student loans, car loans, credit card debt, business loans, etc. - especially considering that our economic growth is currently hampered by a persistent debt overhang caused by a deflationary credit crises.

Also, higher inflation will server to reduce the trade deficit by disincentivizing imports in favor of domestic alternatives, and by making our exports cheaper in foreign markets. Both of these effects will increase domestic production and employment.

A sale requires two parties. Why would it be worse for us if, say, European nations (or other developing economies like India and Brazil) hold our paper instead of Russia and China?

Especially since Russia and China would have to sell at a loss to induce potential purchasers to buy...

And that weaker dollar will reduce our trade deficit by disincentivizing imports and making exports cheaper, increase domestic production and employment, and help ease the significant private debt overhang which is still crippling US economic growth. Oh, and it will help the Fed and Treasury keep rates on US debt even lower for even longer.

Sorry for the long post, bu there are a few fundamental misunderstandings of modern currency systems embedded here. First of all, for every dollar sold, there must be a dollar bought. Clearly the purchasers would prefer to have the US dollars than whatever assets they exchange for them, or else they would not participate in the transaction. Who will be buying these dollars? Why would they do so if the dollar was falling in value, unless they speculate that dollars will rise later? (E.g. because they expect the US to retaliate successfully).

Second, it is very likely that a fall in the dollar would prove expansionary to the US economy. Why? Because it would lead to reducing the trade deficit, with a concomitant increase in domestic manufacturing and employment, as imports became relatively more expensive than domestic products. Especially considering that the US is a net energy exporter, it is hard to see why a fall in dollar FX prices should harm the US economy. Many prominent economists argue the exact opposite, including those who run the US central bank (after all, the Fed's policies are expressly designed to stimulate inflation). Additionally, inflationary pressures such as those generated by lower dollar FX prices or central bank policies, actually reduce the interest on government debt.

Finally, we have to ask why Russia and China hold US dollars in the first place, in order to guess whether a sell-off would even be in their own economic interests. China, and to a much lesser extent Russia, hold US dollars because they have export driven economies. In other words, they sell us stuff. As a result, we have stuff, and they have dollars (again, both sides are satisfied by these transactions, or they would not choose to make them). Why are these export-led economies willing to trade scarce physical resources and labor time for US paper?

One major reason is access to US technology via dollar-denominated markets. Another is that China and Russia both operate fixed exchange rates (or fixed rate bounds) against the dollar. They use their dollar reserves to maintain their target FX rates. Selling dollars will drive their currencies above their target rates. Their exports will become more expensive for foreigners to purchase. Their export-led economies will suffer as a result. And, their banks will have to other assets to hold for international capital requirements, or else their (non-US) trading partners will perceive them to be insolvent. I guess they could try Euro or Japan bonds...but the truth is, there are not really any assets as safe as US dollars and US treasury debt.

Not taken, but willingly exchanged. That's what "buy" means.

True, but at the moment every advanced economy has a large output gap. An insufficient amount of money is being created, and as a result markets can't clear.

Fed governors are certainly politicians (just not elected), and the Fed has existed only since 1914. Before that time, the US Treasury spent money directly to fund its budget. Even under the gold and silver standards, the government constantly had to increase its leverage on the gold backing, but the US dollar never collapsed.

My broader point is that events like the Weimar hyperinflation are not the result of politicians madly printing money for no reason. The Weimar hyperinflation occurred because of combination of circumstances in which Germany lost a war. France and Russia confiscated its manufacturing capacity by literally disassembling factories and shipping them away. Germany was made to pay enormously large reparations, which had to be rendered in gold. The reparations required more gold than ever existed in Germany, and Germany was estimated to need at least until 1990 to make up the difference. The response was to print more and more marks, in order to buy gold and other currencies from abroad, and also for domestic use. The resulting inflation forced people to spend any earned money immediately. This drove the re-establishment of the German manufacturing sector. In the meantime, a new bank was established which issued notes backed by immobile real assets, like farm land. Once the Rentenbank was large enough it was merged with the central bank, and began issuing a stable currency. The whole stabilization only took a few months.

TL;DR: The Weimar hyperinflation, which resulted from a confluence of political factors, may have scarred the German people, but it did re-inflate manufacturing in the run-up to the creation of a new mark, in a way which the gold standard would have impaired.

Finally, with respect to growth, there is no evidence that inflation up to ~40% has any correlation with reduced growth. So the obsession with extremely low inflation as a opposed to moderate ~4% inflation is really unjustified.

The dollar under the gold standard, like any precious metal-based currency, is still a creature of the government and of politics (and therefore politicians). The government selects a unit of account and employs its military to levee taxes, which generate demand for the currency. Balance of payments generally requires that the government somehow spend the money it collects (else the economy is sucked dry) even under static conditions, but economic growth has always required expansion of the money supply. Thus for thousands of years politicians have been adulterating coin to promote growth.

During the Civil War or World War II, inflation was generated by fiscal policy on unprecedented scales - the federal government using the twin printing presses of the Treasury (Greenbacks and Securities) to purchase goods, in turn inducing those producers to produce more. In other words, if Lincoln printed a bunch of Greenbacks and as a result their value dropped, that value movement implies that those Greenbacks were actually willingly or not-so-willingly accepted in return for goods and services, which were themselves put to use winning the wars.

A "helicopter drop" would be fiscal policy. The US central bank, like most central banks worldwide, does not have the authority (or operational ability) to conduct "helicopter drops" of money. All they can do is 1) set the federal funds rate to positive values and 2) set the yield of government liabilities through quantitative easing.

May be, but the press in question belongs to the private banks. In other words, when the central bank can lower its funds rate, it can indirectly create inflation by increasing the proportion of profitable lending opportunities, which induces banks to create more loans / bank deposits (loans create deposits), which can lead to inflation. However, if the funds rate cannot be lowered and/or there are no profitable lending opportunities (debt overhang), then no amount of CB money (reserves introduced through QE) can induce a bank to make loans and generate inflation. The problem is that QE does not increase the net financial assets of the private sector. It does still contribute to bank liquidity, but Canada has a system with no overnight reserve holdings - that is, at night, only bank money (and gov't bonds) exist.

Of course, a large proportion of the transfer payments really are funded by money created through Treasury / Fed operations. If the summary were correct, and the money all had to be taken from some to give to others, then it would not be possible for the government to run deficits.

You see a lot of people make the same error in logic when discussing fiscal policy.

Maybe central banks are not nearly as capable of generating inflation-on-demand, as you assume?

The printing press has been under control of politicians, here in North America, since the days of colonial government over 300 years ago. No hyperinflation.

All actual hyperinflation events have been brought on by war, collapse of a government or other severe political turmoil.

To be fair, uncovering non-malfeasance is probably a not-too-unfrequent side-effect of uncovering real malfeasance.

It's actually not the data, it's just the device itself as a functional iPad. The activation lock feature requires the password to use the device even after a factory reset.

The point I was trying to make is that extending or refusing sympathy to someone because of their circumstances is not the same thing as creating different laws for them.