[redgolum]

A recent sale near here (eastern Iowa) had the land going for $9,500 an acre. Better estimate is around $7,500 to $8,000. The commodities bubble has really influenced prices.

I am not sure about selling federal land. To often it is “sold” to a non profit or connected group that then destroys it. Now, in New Mexico most of the scrub ground isn't worth much, but there are down sides to selling the land. Once you sell an asset, you don't get it back.

[muawiyah]

With gazillions of acres the nonprofit groups are terribly outclassed.

This wouldn't be like the deal where the little old lady donates her family farm to the Sierra Club and they turn around and swap the farm for some other piece of public land they prefer (like with the endangered treetop toad).

This would be a much more organized use of public lands to BACK public debt, and at the margins where sales would be required to raise cash or redeem other bonds (as in a "default swap" eh) there'd be a transfer of value if not necessarily of a specific piece of property.

Any time it was necessary to redeem a bond certain lands would be marketed ~

[muawiyah]

BTW, in America when you sell a federal asset that returns it to the private sector where it can be put to productive use.

That's a win-win every time.