With John Boehner actively trying to destroy the U.S., why not mint a trillion dollar coin?
A few open questions – how big should the coin be? Should it be gigantic, or tiny? I like the gigantic coin, but good arguments can be made for the tiny version of the coin.
Who should be on the coin? Obama? You can make a case for beowulf – he came up with the idea, not Jack Balkin. I think a full profile of Carlos like the Ike dime would be fantastic.
Where should the coin be stored? I say: Fort Knox. We should have the Treasury mint it, then a huge, military escort for the coin to Fort Knox.
The Trillion Dollar Coin and the Debt Ceiling
It appears we’re going to hit the debt ceiling sometime right before the election, according to Mark Zandi and Talking Points Memo:
“There is a risk that the treasury will hit its $16.4 trillion debt limit before the next presidential inauguration,” emails Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi. “It will be close. I suspect the Treasury will have enough accounting wiggle room to get there, but much depends on whether the economy sticks close to script.”
One plausible scenario, then, is that Congress will have to address the debt ceiling issue in its November-December lame-duck session. But that’s exactly when it’s expected to address huge issues, like the expiring Bush tax cuts and the automatic spending cuts locked in by the last debt limit deal. The outcomes of all those debates will hang heavily on the results of the election — a clean win for Obama portends a much different resolution than an Obama victory in which the GOP takes the Senate, let alone a GOP sweep.”
Somebody pointed out we’re probably hit the debt ceiling right around election time in 2012 – and he did it immediately after the debate last year. This guy must have a crystal ball or something.
Well, last time, that guy waited too long to start talking about the debt ceiling. Not this time.
We need to do something about spending in the U.S….We need to pay off some of our debt by minting one or many trillion dollar coins. We can do it, and its prudent to have less debt in the United States, rather than more.
Fortunately for us at MMR, we happen to have the creator of the Trillion Dollar Coin idea very close by. beowulf is the person responsible for this idea which now has 340,000 entries in Google and it’s very own place in Wikipedia!
Don’t wait until the middle of a presidential election to bring up the idea of getting around the debt ceiling. August is too late. Now is the time to start talking about the Trillion Dollar Coin, reminding people we can do it, and remind important people it exists.
I’ll probably have more about the Trillion Dollar Coin in the next few weeks and months.
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Michael Sankowski spends a lot of his time applying quantitative mathematics to financial markets. When he's not playing the guitar, he has been a professional trader for 20 years. He's traded billions of dollars on four continents and is a well-known financial writer. He's a CFA, CAIA, and has created patented Futures products. He's here to help you make more money (and especially not lose your money).
