No Platinum Coin

[Timshel]

(1) I say we treat our debt "problem" like we treat our unemployment problem and treat our unemployment problem how we treat our debt "problem."

(2) I know all the cool kids are trying to denigrate a perfectly lawful solution to a manufactured crisis as "fantasy" and the product of "academic douchebags" but that isn't a good argument against it. The law says what the law says. There is no coherent reading of the law that makes the platinum coin solution unlawful. And spare me the nonsense about "stability as a union" and "political instability." You know what would really create political instability? If we breached the debt ceiling. Any perfectly lawful measure to avoid that should be utilized. It's a shame the President disagrees.

(3) Congress most certainly granted the Secretary of the Treasury the power to mint a trillion dollar platinum coin. Whether it meant to do so is a separate question, but it gave him the power to do it.

As the article I linked noted the Fed has some say too and may not go along with such a scheme.

It is the sort of academic fantasy idea where you ignore the fact that there are multiple actors involved and pretend you have absolute power. The President cannot act like a tyrant and expect our ability to borrow money to go unharmed.

Yes, of course, a failure to pay our debts will have an impact too.

 

[Bonestorm]

As the article I linked noted the Fed has some say too and may not go along with such a scheme.

It is the sort of academic fantasy idea where you ignore the fact that there are multiple actors involved and pretend you have absolute power. The President cannot act like a tyrant and expect our ability to borrow money to go unharmed.

Yes, of course, a failure to pay our debts will have an impact too.

(1) You have yet to explain how the president doing something Congress has allowed him to do is acting like a tyrant.

(2) As between defaulting and minting a platinum coin and not defaulting, the former would have a substantially worse impact than the latter. The plaitinum coin is by no means an optimal solution to this dumbass manufactured crisis, but it's overwhelming superior to default.


Postscript: That analysis of the FED not going along with the scheme is pretty suspect, and here's the big tell: "One oddity about this reading of the law: it would seem to exclude the Fed from allowing the Treasury to draw on deposits made from bond proceeds. Clearly, that's not the way the law is interpreted—even though that's what a consistent reading of the term "revenue" would demand."

Any reading of revenue that excludes bond proceeds is not a good one, since it's pretty clear that the FED treats bond proceeds as revenues.