Flushing the greenback

There’s one good thing that’ll come out of the Federal Reserve’s likely decision tomorrow to create more money so it can continue sham purchases of government debt.

It’s this: if Washington continues to monetize our country’s liabilities in this way, we will no longer need the Bureau of Printing and Engraving — a considerable cost savings.

Yep, keep this up and US dollars will soon be supplied by Charmin.

And this has worked pretty damn well. In fact, assets coming into the dollar from around the world have made the US economy the strongest, most resilient one ever on this planet.

But this may be changing.

If you print too many dollars — or worse, create money electronically while keeping the amount secret — our currency will no longer be a haven.

You may have also noticed that there are elections taking place today. The end result, say people who know this stuff better than I, will likely be a Republican majority in at least one house of Congress.

Republicans are as much to blame for the current economic mess as the Democrats.

But the ascent of Republicans could, and should, make the people who’ve been crafting economic decisions decidedly nervous.

If Republicans take control of the House, for instance, someone like Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) might wind up with a leadership role in the Financial Services Committee. Paul has been itching to audit the Fed’s books, which could be trouble.

And those books aren’t going to look any better after tomorrow’s meeting of the Fed’s Open Market Committee, which is expected to announce more quantitative easing, or QE.

In case you’ve been in a coma, that’s the printing of money to purchase government bonds in an effort to keep interest rates low.

Wall Street has dubbed this QE2 since it’s the second attempt to help the economy in this way. Last year’s QE effort has kept rates low but has done very little in the way of stimulating economic growth.

But we really won’t be getting QE2 tomorrow. It will be more like QE 1.5.

Wall Street had expected $1 trillion in new bond purchases to be approved, but the Fed probably will only print enough money for $500 billion. Only — as if $500 billion isn’t an astounding amount.

So, will the US avoid the Charmin Dollar? Or will the dollar become the butt of the currency world?

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Something very strange happened last week that I believe is misunderstood.

Federal prosecutors here asked a judge to close the doors to the public during a trial of an employee of Goldman Sachs who was accused in ’09 of stealing the firm’s trading secrets.

The FBI said those secrets could be used to ma nipulate markets.

But the request by the US prose cutor in Man hattan last week is curious.

Why didn’t Goldman ask for the closed court?

Maybe the prosecutor isn’t trying to protect Goldman’s interests but is instead planning another case using that information.

jcrudele@nypost.com