Could Two Platinum Coins Solve The Debt-Ceiling Crisis? -- Washington Post
If President Obama wants to avoid an economic calamity next year, he could always show up at a press conference bearing two shiny platinum coins, worth… $1 trillion apiece.
Okay, that sounds utterly insane. But ever since last year, some economists and legal scholars have suggested that the “platinum coin option” is one way to defuse a crisis if Congress can’t or won’t lift the debt ceiling soon. At least in theory.
The U.S. government is, after all, facing a real problem. The Treasury Department will hit its $16.4 trillion borrowing limit by next February at the latest. Unless Congress reaches an agreement to raise that borrowing limit, the government will no longer be able to borrow enough money to pay all its bills.
Read more ....
My Comment: If this is how wealth is created, why stop at two .... why not mint a thousand .... why not hundred thousand .... better still .... why not a million.
1 comment:
Why not a thousand? Because Congress didn't pass laws requiring the US government to spend a thousand of those coins' worth of dollars. You'll notice that this a solution to the debt ceiling crisis, not the national debt. The debt ceiling crisis is a completely artificial thing caused by the fact that Congress has both voted to spent X dollars and authorize taxing and borrowing less than X dollars. Thus, it can be solved by trickery like this, and because it is self-contradictory ("you must spend X dollars, but we will not allow you to acquire X dollars to spend") really can't be solved without some kind of trickery. Bringing the spending and taxing into line to reduce the need for borrowing is the real challenge, and that's the one that will require a serious solution from Congress.
Post a Comment