> You've done plenty of hand wringing of red herrings about what the state is and isn't, but you've dodged the question.

I really haven't done either of these things haha, I suspect you're not following.

> Unless you have a problem with the Nuremburg trials and you think the holocaust was just a gentleman's disagreement between the Jews and German government, I think you understand the government is capable of crime.

The question of whether a state can commit a crime is a difficult one because the state itself decides what is and is not a crime domestically. When you throw someone in a locked room, it's kidnapping, but when the state does it, it's an arrest. Abortion is legal in some states now, not in others. The same action committed in different places may or may not be a crime depending on which state you're physically located.

A crime in the legal sense is defined as "an action or omission that constitutes an offense that may be prosecuted by the state and is punishable by law."

With respect to the Holocaust some aspects were criminal and some were redefined not to be crimes in Germany by the Nazis. In a real way the fact a lot of it either wasn't a crime or wasn't prosecuted is the reason the war happened. To make it a crime, and to prosecute it.

When you go to that extreme, you usually land on "yeah, you and who's army?"

More on the notion of state crimes here. [1]

For a state to commit a crime, it's not as simple as you make it out to be, see Article 19 paragraph 2 of the ILC Draft Articles on State Responsibility. It has to be an internationally wrongful act, resulting from the breach of an International obligation which is essential for the protection of fundamental interests of the international community and also be recognized as a crime by that community as a whole.

Under that framework you can see why whether the Holocaust was a crime in Nazi Germany or not is more challenging to answer, whereas the international community decided that - under that framework - it was, and well, we had a war over it to make sure that international definition matched up with the domestic one.

So we circle back to...

> Does restriction of financial tools that are used to abet crime help reduce crime or not?

I think you'll find that overwhelmingly financial matters do not rise to the level of international crimes under the ILC Draft Articles on State Responsibility. This leaves it largely to the state to define.

Therefore, given that the state broadly decides in financial matters what is and is not criminal the state really isn't in a position to commit financial crimes at home - as they can simply change the law to define them as legal without running afoul of the aforementioned. Individuals can. And therefore, broadly speaking, no, the restriction of financial tools does not reduce the ability of a state to commit crimes. It does in fact prevent individuals from committing crimes as defined by said state.

You're asking for a simple answer to a very complex question.

> There's certainly an argument to be made here currency debasement is not necessarily the will of the people, unless you truly think the people of Zimbabwe or Venezuela wanted to see their already inflating bills lose value even faster as the government printed more to fund the wages and ill-gotten gains of corrupt bureaucrats.

Sure, and we call that a failed state. In a failed state, you have bigger problems than your currency (like violence, bloodshed and a devastated economy) - and once you resolve your governance issues, your currency will no longer be a problem.

[1] http://www.ejil.org/pdfs/10/2/592.pdf