White House spokesman Jay Carney said that they will not be negotiating on the debt ceiling, but they aren’t going to rule out minting a trillion dollar coin. Seriously.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney refused to rule out a radical proposal to mint a $1 trillion platinum coin that would allow the federal government to go around the debt ceiling if Congress refuses to act.
Briefing reporters Wednesday afternoon, Carney said, “There is no plan B, there is no backup plan” to Congress raising the nation’s borrowing limit, but repeatedly declined to rule out the proposal to skirt the limit. “There is Congress’s responsibility to pay the bills of the United States,” he added.
Carney explicitly ruled out any White House staff efforts to negotiate with Congress over raising the debt limit, saying no one of the administration with engage in talks on raising the federal borrowing limit.
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Asked if he was aware of any administration officials examining the $1 trillion coin proposal. He replied with the non-Shermanesque, “Not that I know of.” (Read More)
Here’s the video.
Unfortunately, there are people who actually think minting a trillion dollar coin would be a good idea.
Such an absurd idea is, pun intended, gaining currency as a technically legal way for Washington to avert a looming fight over the debt ceiling. A Democratic congressman, a Nobel-winning economist and several prominent writers are now floating the idea that the Treasury Department should use obscure powers to mint a $1 trillion coin if Congress does not permit an increase in the debt ceiling.
That coin, then, could be used to pay America’s debts.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., told Capital New York that the “out of the ordinary” idea could actually work.
“I’m being absolutely serious,” he said. “It sounds silly, but it’s absolutely legal.”Folks like Nadler point to a tiny section in the U.S. code that allows the Treasury secretary to “mint and issue platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coins” of a size and denomination of “the secretary’s discretion.” This is mainly for commemorative coins, but the idea that the provision could be exploited as an ace-up-the-sleeve for the administration was first explored during the 2011 debt ceiling fight. Now, it’s back. (Read More)
Good grief.
@lonelycon Why not just make 17 of them and give them to China, be done with all our debt? Good grief is right, well said!
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@lonelycon Pardon me, bartender, but can you make change for my trillion?
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Why not mint 1 million $1,000,000 coins. Its the same thing….
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Why not mint 1 million $1,000,000 coins. Its the same thing….
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Just when the approval rating of the congress is bracketed by cockroaches on the plus side and ebola on the minus side, someone has come up with a brilliant idea, that is the minting a trillion dollar platinum coin. Stamp out 15 or 20 of these babies, ship them to China and tell them to quit bugging us. This is truly inspired thinking, it wouldn’t be until the end of an Obama 3rd term that the debt would be back up to $16T+, so the country would have all those years of smooooth sailing. Also, taking the idea a step farther, even more $$ could be saved by substituting an alloy of zinc and aluminum (aka potmetal) for the platinum which would allow die-casting the Obama coins in Taiwan thereby entirely avoiding all the picky minting problems. It’s “out-of-the-box” thinking like this that will force those skeptics out there to change their opinions.
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FDR defaulted by raising the price of gold and refusing to pay gold bonds in gold coin as promised. This coin thing is another way to default on sovereign debt while not quite exactly technically doing so. And default we will. If not this way, then some way. Although not quite exactly technically defaulting.
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