incidentally, jamie galbraith has a good quote on the history of the debt ceiling "The debt ceiling was first enacted in 1917. Why? The date tells all: we were about to enter the Great War. To fund that effort, the Wilson government needed to issue Liberty Bonds. This was controversial, and the debt ceiling was cover, passed to reassure the rubes that Congress would be “responsible” even while the country went to war. It was, from the beginning, an exercise in bad faith and has remained so every single second to the present day."
http://my.firedoglake.com/scarecrow/2011/07/12/james-k-galbraith-hawk-nation-a-guide-to-the-catastrophic-debt-ceiling-debate/ the coin is a work around for the debt ceiling. the treasury mints up a trillion dollar platinum coin (they can just label it a trillion dollar coin, a trillion dollars worth of platinum isn't required) and deposits it at the fed. in exchange the treasury gets a trillion dollars credited to it's reserve account at the fed (basically a checking account at the federal reserve). it uses that money to either buy up treasury bonds and retire them or to fund future spending. presto debt ceiling fake crisis averted. -- -Nathan Tankus ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
