Nathan Tankus: "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."
Yes, yes, I get all that. What I don't understand is: Why a *coin*? Why, in the absence of a law specifically banning the issuance of paper, is this necessary? Why not paper? Or even, you know, a change in electronic information that says the money has been issued? The scary feeling I get says this is the reasoning: We can't issue *paper* because paper is insubstantial, fragile, ultimately meaningless. We must issue a *coin* because a coin is heavy, substantial, durable, pretty, shiny, "real." In other words, it is magical thinking of the most laughably primitive sort. But it's not being pushed by right-wing cranks, it's pushed by some of "our* people, so it is a good idea. Is that the explanation? On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 10:15 AM, nathan tankus <[email protected]> wrote: > 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 ... _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
