Free Republic

The Treasury Department will not mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin to get around the debt ceiling. If they did, the Federal Reserve would not accept it. That’s the bottom line of the statement that Anthony Coley, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, gave me today. “Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit,” he said. The inclusion of the Federal Reserve is significant. For the platinum coin idea to work, the Federal Reserve...

Much of the last 4 years has been a nightmare for conservatives. But there is a crazy, stupid, absurd idea being seriously discussed in Washington that makes previous nightmares from the White House pale in comparison. The idea is for the Treasury Department to mint a platinum coin and declare it to be worth $1 trillion. If Congress won't raise the debt ceiling, the coin would be deposited at the Federal Reserve and Obama could continue to spend money. Congress passed a bill allowing for the minting of platinum coins several years ago. But it was a bill designed to...

Well, the trillion-dollar-coin thing — deal with the debt ceiling by exploiting a legal loophole to have the Treasury mint one or more large-denomination coins, deposit them at the Fed, and use the cash in the new account to pay bills — has really taken off. Last month I spoke with a senior Fed official who had never heard of the idea; these days it’s all over. There seem to be two kinds of objections. One is that it would be undignified. Here’s how to think about that: we have a situation in which a terrorist may be about to...

NOBEL PRIZE WINNER PAUL KRUGMAN: Obama Must Be Ready To Mint The Trillion Dollar Platinum Coin Joe WeisenthalJanuary 7, 2013 The movement to mint a trillion dollar platinum coin gets its biggest backer yet: Paul Krugman. In a new post up titled Be Ready To Mint The Coin he writes: It’s easy to make sententious remarks to the effect that we shouldn’t look for gimmicks, we should sit down like serious people and deal with our problems realistically. That may sound reasonable — if you’ve been living in a cave for the past four years.Given the realities of our political...

Welcome to Zimbabwe.  This is not a parody -- it is an actual report from the Washington Post:   Some economists and legal scholars have suggested that the “platinum coin option” is one way to defuse a crisis if Congress can’t or won’t lift the debt ceiling soon. At least in theory. The U.S. government is, after all, facing a real problem. The Treasury Department will hit its $16.4 trillion borrowing limit by next February at the latest. Unless Congress reaches an agreement to raise that borrowing limit, the government will no longer be able to borrow enough money...