> When the govt "prints money", the govt takes on new debt against which it issues the currency notes, isn't it?
No you don't have to take on new debt to issue new currency.
Let's say you're a dictator running a banana republic. Your currency used to be modestly stable, prior to your coup. It even stabilized for a while after your coup, as you made a lot of fake promises around stability and economic improvements that the West wanted to hear. Then you begin your authoritarian implementation, you start breaking things to maintain your grip on power. The currency begins to devalue, slowly at first, and then more rapidly. The economy starts to shake apart, you implement price controls and various regulations to restrict & control supply chains. Things just keep getting worse, tax revenue isn't what it used to be and keeps getting worse. International debt markets are no longer believers, they don't trust you to repay anything. Now you're struggling to pay for routine governmental things including salaries for workers to keep the government functioning, or police & military to maintain order (which you're rapidly losing control of as your nation spirals into chaos). So you turn to rampant printing of your nation's already badly weakened currency (you order the printing presses from the Germans, Giesecke and Devrient GmbH). There's no need to issue debt as you do it, you just print new fiat bills and give it to whomever is still willing to accept it in exchange for goods or services (and you definitely force it upon your government employees, which they promptly ditch - at an increasingly steep conversion fee - in pursuit of USD). The word is out, everybody knows what you're doing to the national currency, it proceeds to sink like a stone. You just keep adding zeros on to the new bills as you print them. Maybe you get more desperate and fake-outlaw USD and turn its use into a black market (in reality you and your cronies, and the elites, will still be utilizing USD freely; and the USD black market will be understood as a common presence, it's just that now you can arbitrarily smash people that go near it for any reason at any time, everybody is now a criminal).
No you don't have to take on new debt to issue new currency.
Let's say you're a dictator running a banana republic. Your currency used to be modestly stable, prior to your coup. It even stabilized for a while after your coup, as you made a lot of fake promises around stability and economic improvements that the West wanted to hear. Then you begin your authoritarian implementation, you start breaking things to maintain your grip on power. The currency begins to devalue, slowly at first, and then more rapidly. The economy starts to shake apart, you implement price controls and various regulations to restrict & control supply chains. Things just keep getting worse, tax revenue isn't what it used to be and keeps getting worse. International debt markets are no longer believers, they don't trust you to repay anything. Now you're struggling to pay for routine governmental things including salaries for workers to keep the government functioning, or police & military to maintain order (which you're rapidly losing control of as your nation spirals into chaos). So you turn to rampant printing of your nation's already badly weakened currency (you order the printing presses from the Germans, Giesecke and Devrient GmbH). There's no need to issue debt as you do it, you just print new fiat bills and give it to whomever is still willing to accept it in exchange for goods or services (and you definitely force it upon your government employees, which they promptly ditch - at an increasingly steep conversion fee - in pursuit of USD). The word is out, everybody knows what you're doing to the national currency, it proceeds to sink like a stone. You just keep adding zeros on to the new bills as you print them. Maybe you get more desperate and fake-outlaw USD and turn its use into a black market (in reality you and your cronies, and the elites, will still be utilizing USD freely; and the USD black market will be understood as a common presence, it's just that now you can arbitrarily smash people that go near it for any reason at any time, everybody is now a criminal).