Hilfe beim englischen Text

  • Hallo,

    ich schreibe gerade meine Diplomarbeit zum Thema Fiscal Theory of the Price Level und komme an einer Literaturstelle nicht weiter. Nicht weil es englisch ist, sondern weil ich die Logik dahinter nicht kapiere:


    Suppose that in the morning of the only day in
    this model, private agents hold a given amount
    of government debt, b. Here and throughout
    this review, we assume government debt is
    non-negative: Agents cannot borrow from the
    government. In the Sargent and Wallace model,
    debt is fixed in real terms; it represents a
    commitment to pay a fixed real amount of
    goods—for instance, corn.
    The government’s budget constraint is given by
    b´+ s f + sm =b.
    The left and right sides of this equation summarize
    the sources and uses, respectively, of
    corn to the government. The first source of
    funds, b´, is corn the government receives from
    households that purchase new debt in the
    evening.
    The second term, s f, denotes taxes
    net of spending, and the third term, sm, is
    seignorage from government-supplied fiat
    currency. The right side of the budget constraint,
    b, is the principal and interest on past
    government debt.
    Optimizing households will obviously never
    choose b´ > 0, and they are constrained from
    setting b´ < 0 by assumption.

    Ich kapier folgendes nicht:
    Wieso halten private agents irgendwelche Schulden vom Staat?
    Was soll dieses b´sein?

    Bisherige Erkenntnis:
    staatliche Budgetrestriktion: Schulden = Steuern + Seigniorage + ???

    Wäre super wenn mir jemand weiterhelfen könnte oder sich jemand meldet der generell Ahnung von der FTPL hat und/oder deutsche Literatur zum Thema kennt.

    Gruß