A lot more ATMs would get stolen.

I think the days of the atm are nearly over. Fewer and fewer people have need of paper money.

And what would assure that it wasn’t counterfeit? Or that any printed money were not counterfeit if an ATM could do it?

They have enough problems already trying to deter counterfeiting without making it so simple that ATMs all over the country could produce credible looking currency.

Gold bars are a whole different issue because you can’t counterfeit gold. It either is or isn’t. I think the primary problem there is the sheer weight of metal vs. paper. Paper money is a WHOLE LOT lighter and therefore manageable.

I’m not quite sure why it’s done in Dubai except that it’s an international type of city with visitors from all over the world and perhaps more convenient to have than the paper money of multiple countries. The value of gold translates across all of them regardless of what the native currency is. So they’re doing it as a courtesy for the convenience of their customers.

That’s just my best guess on it.

Too much available money makes the sum of all worthless.

No government in its right mind is going to permit the dissemination of machines capable of printing its currency.

Let’s just suspend reality for a moment and assume that it wasn’t a massive counterfeit risk, wrought with all kinds of problems, and that the rollout went perfectly with flawless security, no software bugs that allowed people to glitch the ATM, the logistics of transporting and distributing the special paper ink, and security strips were resolved, the machines could be serviced securely, and they were perfectly calibrated so an ATM couldn’t ever start misprinting bills etc…

What the hell would be the point? What advantage would printing the bills accomplish? You’d still have to deliver the paper/ink etc. via armored care like you would with distributing fully-formed pager currency. Not to mention there’s a major issue with diluting the value of the dollar. The fed does increase/decrease the money supply via the money multiplier and interest rates, but this is done through tight, centralized controls. If you weren’t destroying every dollar deposited for each one printed, you’d have major problems with the money supply.