Ben Bernanke: "The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press"

[T]he U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost... [U]nder a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation.

~ Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve governor, from a speech before the National Economists Club, Washington, D.C., November 21, 2002