Posted on 05/04/2023 4:36:21 PM PDT by lowbridge
The US is hurtling towards an entirely preventable economic crisis, and a trillion-dollar coin could solve all of its problems — if the Biden administration decides to take it seriously.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that the government could run out of money to pay its debts as soon as June 1, triggering a never-before-seen debt-ceiling crisis. Even a short default could cost the country almost a million jobs and trigger a recession.
But Republicans and Democrats are still waiting for the other to blink. The House GOP narrowly passed a bill last week that would tie massive budget cuts to a one-year increase, which Senate Democrats have proclaimed dead on arrival. President Joe Biden said he would veto that legislation, and continues to insist upon a clean raise.
Some economists say that means it's time for a break-the-glass option: a trillion-dollar coin.
The coin — which wouldn't need to be bigger than an average coin, and can be made quickly — is part of a potential debt-ceiling loophole. The Treasury Department can mint platinum coins of any denomination. That's led to a school of thought that says Yellen should simply mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin and deposit it to pay off the debts until a more permanent solution can be found.
"At this point, if any of the other solutions, the so-called more serious solutions would work, then they would've been used by now. But they keep not actually being strong enough. The coin's the only one that's strong enough," Rohan Grey, an assistant professor at Willamette University College of Law, told Insider.
To be sure, Biden's administration has not been so accepting of using a $1 trillion platinum coin to avoid an economically catastrophic default.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Better run your calculations again. Platinum is sold in troy ounces, not avoirdupois.
I’d still manage to lose it!
> If its value is really a $1 trillion, that’s a lot of platinum. <
The relevant law does not require the coin’s stated value to match the coin’s value of platinum. It only requires that coin be made of platinum.
So our good friends in DC can put whatever value they want on the coin. One trillion dollars, ten trillion dollars, one hundred trillion dollars. It doesn’t matter.
Modern monetary policy sure is interesting.
Didn’t the Simpson’s do an episode with a $1 trillion bill?
Why not Americium 243?
Did it end up in Fidel Castro’s hands.
The cheap drink machines outside Walmart are already programmed for it.
Smoke, lotsa smoke.
The cheap drink machines outside Walmart are already programmed for it.
Just make 50 of them, and give them all to china and other creditors who loaned us $40 Trillion for our national debt.
I cry as the citizenry has zero understanding of economic theory and consequence.
I’ll take a piece of eight.
Not really worth a trillion, just like a quarter doesn’t really have 25¢ of copper and nickel... yet.
The dirty little secret is that we don’t owe the national debt to china et-al, but to the FED.
Since the debt is fiat dollars, it was created out of thin air by the FED, and the interest on it goes towards paying the owners of the FED and about 300 FED stockholders. THe FED, non-federal, is just a private banking corporation that we (the US) tasked with printing the currency, and we pay them interest on that which they create.
Having paid a plug nickel in principal.
“debt” held by China/et-al is merely them holding the “debt” created by the FED in the first place.
I had one of those. Accidentally put in a candy machine. Dang machine kept it and didn’t dispense my candy.
Prices are truth.
You can’t make coins to avoid them.
Why not a $100-trillion coin?
What’s 10% of a trillion dollars? Asking for the big g..,uhh a friend.
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