A coin to save US?

[Simfan34]

...a one trillion dollar coin?

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http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/be-ready-to-mint-that-coin/

[freefair]

...
...
...You can keep the change.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I can see it now.  A heist film involving stealing the trillion dollar coin!

[DC Al Fine]

Well at least Krugman is being honest now: "Why don't we just print more money?"

[Lief 🗽]

Obama should do this. It would be hilarious to see the increasingly paultarded on this issue Republicans complain about it.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Well at least Krugman is being honest now: "Why don't we just print more money?"

He's been saying that (quite reasonably, to some degree) for years.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Why stop at one? Couldn't we print sixteen or so and resolve this debt issue entirely?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Why stop at one? Couldn't we print sixteen or so and resolve this debt issue entirely?

No.  As an accounting gimmick it won't do much harm, but if used to retire the debt it would seriously damage the economy by triggering hyperinflation.

[Hatman 🍁]

Mint 300 million of them to give out to every citizen. Wait for hyperinflation to take its course. Revalue the currency.  Instant solution. The rich have pretty much the same amount of money as the poor.

[LastVoter]

Mint 300 million of them to give out to every citizen. Wait for hyperinflation to take its course. Revalue the currency.  Instant solution. The rich have pretty much the same amount of money as the poor.

What about assets? A good solution nonetheless.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Even assuming the coins were only 1 pennyweight each, that would still be over 50 billion current dollars to acquire the platinum needed, even if for some strange reason the price of platinum didn't go up from the massive increase in demand and there were that much platinum to buy.  (Even with such puny coins, you'd be talking about four's years world-wide production of platinum to even be able to do that.)

[Hatman 🍁]

They wouldn't have to be platinum.

[opebo]

Why stop at one? Couldn't we print sixteen or so and resolve this debt issue entirely?

No.  As an accounting gimmick it won't do much harm, but if used to retire the debt it would seriously damage the economy by triggering hyperinflation.

Disappearing debt doesn't trigger hyperinflation, if done right.  Printing money to pay off debt just puts money back into the economy as capital, not as wages/income.  Capital is never 'spent', and we already have such an enormous surplus of un-investable capital in the world economy that an extra few trillion wouldn't make any noticeable difference.

The problem with totally printing away the US debt is not the printing per se but the absence of american debt. If we hadn't the wonderful deep resource of US gov't bond debt attracting (sopping up) the inevitable enormity of excess capital in a global system of neo-liberal inequality, all that money would automatically have to go to Japanese/European/etc debt - there literally .  This would have various potential negative and positive side effects.

The best solution is to gradually disappear the debt while at the same time steadily increasing government spending - thus creating an equal or greater amount of debt as the amount being disappeared by the fed.

[they don't love you like i love you]

Actually such a coin would be virtually useless to a private citizen. It's not like you can walk into a store, pay with it, and expect change. You could deposit it in the bank but I don't think most banks people deal with for personal checking usually handle trillion dollar deposits and there's all sorts of regulations. Also working for awhile would be pretty pointless so you'd have hordes of people quitting their jobs and the economy would grind to a halt.

[Hatman 🍁]

Actually such a coin would be virtually useless to a private citizen. It's not like you can walk into a store, pay with it, and expect change. You could deposit it in the bank but I don't think most banks people deal with for personal checking usually handle trillion dollar deposits and there's all sorts of regulations. Also working for awhile would be pretty pointless so you'd have hordes of people quitting their jobs and the economy would grind to a halt.

Preparation would be needed, obviously.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

They wouldn't have to be platinum.

Under current law, they would have to be.

Well maybe not.  The mint also has authority to mint gold bullion coins with any denomination it chooses.  However, by law, the government must sell those gold coins for the bullion price.  So they could mint trillion dollar gold coins and then sell them below face value until such time as the price of gold caught up, which would destroy the dollar, but not directly profit the government.

[Hatman 🍁]

They wouldn't have to be platinum.

Under current law, they would have to be.

Well maybe not.  The mint also has authority to mint gold bullion coins with any denomination it chooses.  However, by law, the government must sell those gold coins for the bullion price.  So they could mint trillion dollar gold coins and then sell them below face value until such time as the price of gold caught up, which would destroy the dollar, but not directly profit the government.

Well, that law would have to change; and I presume others would as well.

[ag]

Well, that law would have to change; and I presume others would as well.

If the law could be changed, there would not be any point in playing this game. It would be enough to pass the debt ceiling extension ))

[ag]

Even assuming the coins were only 1 pennyweight each, that would still be over 50 billion current dollars to acquire the platinum needed, even if for some strange reason the price of platinum didn't go up from the massive increase in demand and there were that much platinum to buy.  (Even with such puny coins, you'd be talking about four's years world-wide production of platinum to even be able to do that.)

Can´t you just print the words "1 trillion dollars" on a single dollar-sized coin? You don't need much platinum for that.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Even assuming the coins were only 1 pennyweight each, that would still be over 50 billion current dollars to acquire the platinum needed, even if for some strange reason the price of platinum didn't go up from the massive increase in demand and there were that much platinum to buy.  (Even with such puny coins, you'd be talking about four's years world-wide production of platinum to even be able to do that.)

Can´t you just print the words "1 trillion dollars" on a single dollar-sized coin? You don't need much platinum for that.

If you were minting just one such coin to evade the debt ceiling.  That post you quoted was in response to Hatman's idea of minting one coin for every American and giving every US citizen one trillion dollars.

[Politico]

The fact that so many people are taking this idea seriously only fuels the argument that it may be time to write off America.

[Negusa Nagast 🚀]

The fact that so many people are taking this idea seriously only fuels the arguments that it may be time to write off America...

Don't you have a rock to crawl back under?

[Politico]

The fact that so many people are taking this idea seriously only fuels the arguments that it may be time to write off America...

Don't you have a rock to crawl back under?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SClFV5ssdgY#t=01m02s