Can a $1 Trillion Coin End Debt Ceiling Crisis?

Yahoo Finance ^ | 01/04/2013 | Charles Riley

[TurboZamboni]

Can Uncle Joe throw a football over that mountain?

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

With a trillion-dollar coin in your pocket, you could drink for free the rest of your life*. “Sorry, all I’ve got is this trillion-dollar coin. Can you break a trillion?”

*Or until Zimbabwe-style inflation takes hold.

[Tzimisce]

These are just as good. These are IOUs.

Lloyd, "Dumb and Dumber"

[buffaloguy]

at current prices of 1550/oz. the coin would weigh 322 tons.

Problem is there is no where near that amount in the entire world.

[Huskrrrr]

How about a Powerball Jackpot worth $1,000,000,000,000? Sell 2,000 tickets for a billion bucks a ticket. Makes as much sense.

[SoothingDave]

It’s a coin made of platinum with the words “one trillion dollars” on it. Not a coin made from $1 million worth of platinum.

[Disambiguator]

They just need to print one of these in US Currency. Problem Solved!

[Buckeye McFrog]

Precisely. A $1 Sacajawea coin has nowhere near a dollar’s worth of copper and nickel in it.

[GraceG]

It’s a coin made of platinum with the words “one trillion dollars” on it. Not a coin made from $1 million worth of platinum.

Then why not mint a one million dollar coin out of copper?

It would be cheaper...

[freedomlover]

Treasury, which runs the government’s debt-issuance operation, is busy creating about $200 billion of headroom by employing what it calls “extraordinary measures.” That should cover about two months’ worth of borrowing.

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So in other words, someone in Treasury is “reducing” spending by 200 billion?

“Fire up the ovens, boys, we got some cookin’ to do!!”

[GraceG]

They fact some people are seriously contemplating this “option” scares the living crap outta me...

[mountainlion]

Why not invent a coin with a built in counter that changed the number for the value of the coin automatically. It could start out a a 2 cent coin and a few years obama would make it worth $1Billion. A loaf of bread could cost lets say $400Billlion and a drink of water to wash it down might cost $100M.

[CoastWatcher]

Excuse me, but what is the difference between a one trillion dollar coin and a trillion one dollar bills?

debt is debt.

[Red Badger]

Only if it's the size of a Yap coin......................

[Lee'sGhost]

Exactly! Geeze... just make it a bazillion dollar coin and do away with taxes for eternity. I mean, we’ll all be trillionaires!

Glad we had a chance to point this out. What a bunch of dummies.

[RegulatorCountry]

What kind of ludicrous, pie-in-the-sky third world voodoo does it take to believe that inventing a gazillion dollar coin that does not even remotely come close to containing that much platinum is going to do anything at all?

Seriously, what is declaring this thing as being worth this or that supposed to do? Are we going to borrow against pretend equity to create pretend money now?

What?

[LucianOfSamasota]

How many $ Trillions have we already ‘minted’ through QE and other means?

What the author suggests in jest is our current fiscal policy.

[dead]

I have five of those Zimbabwe bills in mint condition in my drawer. I bought them on Ebay for about six dollars, which was many times more than they are actually worth, but I splurged.

I also bought Saddam money on Ebay.

[Falcon4.0]

I wonder how much Obama is going to get knocked off the National dept by selling off California to the ChiComms.