Trillion-dollar platinum coin could be minted at the last minute - Axios
A trillion-dollar platinum coin could be minted "within hours of the Treasury Secretary's decision to do so," Philip Diehl, former director of the United States Mint, tells Axios.
Why it matters: Congressional solutions to the debt-ceiling problem could take weeks to implement, especially if the reconciliation process is used — and time is running out. In case of emergency, a trillion-dollar coin could be deployed to bridge any gap between the money running out and the debt ceiling being raised.
How it works: The U.S. Mint, which Diehl ran from 1994 to 2000, already produces a one-ounce Platinum Eagle and has no shortage of platinum blanks already in stock.
Producing a trillion-dollar Eagle would require only the denomination to be changed. "This could be quickly executed on the existing plaster mold of the Platinum Eagle," says Diehl. Then an automated process would transfer the new design to a plastic resin mold.
Even if Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary, has no intention of minting such a coin, there is no reason for her not to quietly instruct the Mint director to take those steps a day or two in advance.
At that point, a coin could be struck in minutes at the West Point mint. Even if it then needed to be physically deposited at the New York Fed, that's only a short helicopter ride away.
"Voila, we'd have bought ourselves the equivalent of a trillion-dollar increase in the debt limit, without any impact on inflation," says Diehl.
Biden's official stance is that we won't mint the coin. If he still has plans to mint the coin - I don't care what he says now.
But my favorite thing about all of this is that Biden might actually be 100% unwilling to mint the coin because like all shitty pols - he's obsessed with how things look and he's even more obsessed with his legacy.
If we mint the coin - sure, Biden and the US are a global laughing stock for many months. But that soon fades away and foreigners do not give a fuck anymore. And in the future this risible workaround will remain a novelty in American textbooks. But Americans in the future will not give a fuck so Biden's legacy will be just fine. And - more importantly - we won't fucking default.
If the gridlock persists and the US defaults - not only will economic chaos unfold - Biden will have badly fucked his own legacy. We will have gone into default because of the vanity of a tired, idiotic, old man who wasn't willing to listen to the people in the room saying "Mr. President, we could just mint the coin."
US Politics: Will our geriatric leadership mint the magic coin or not?
Biden: "We do not need the coin for I am the most powerful wizard in this world. We have my magic and my powers from other realms! I could fart and set Pittsburg on fire! I didn't say that out loud - did I?"
It's my understanding that "risible" likely contains criticism. And the critique might even be biting or cutting. The speaker might be angry or annoyed. "His salary is risible." It's very small and speaker is angry (etc) about it.
My favorite dictionary says "Such as to provoke laughter". Laughable and risible are close to each other. I think risible strongly implies ridiculousness and/or criticism in way laughable does not. This is how I see it...
Lyrics
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Laughable lyrics might have been written to be funny
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Risible lyrics are probably unintentionally funny.
Hat
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A funny hat might be part of a funny costume. Or not.
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A fashion critic or a greatly annoyed fashionista could call a hat risible. They are the High Priests and High Priestess of fashion. A typical person might call the hat silly.
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And yet westerners consider the fertility rites and rain dances and whatnot of indigenous peoples to be naive and superstitious.
To me sacrificing a goat so the crops will keep growing makes a lot more sense than putting numbers on a piece of metal and putting it in a basement forever to keep society from stopping.
It's a shame David Graeber is gone, because I'd love to have his thoughts on this latest wrinkle in the credit economy.
Wait, I have seen this episode. Fidel tricks the American thief into handing it over to Cuba.
The third or fourth level of absurdity of this whole thing is that they are thinking of making it of platinum because The Rules say it cannot be gold or silver. They could just use steel or the plastic mould, yet these people can't rid their mind of the idea that money needs to be a scarce, shiny metal to have value.
Wait, I haven't seen that part addressed directly in a while, but I thought it was the reverse. There was some old rule still in effect that the U.S. mint can create platinum coins of any face value.
could they do another one ,define it as "garbage from the ocean" and then put all the miners on it ? Am i on to something there ?
With the power of memes we could make a trillion dollar coin made of garbage.
Also even if it does go in circulation the US still has way more leeway when it comes to printing money than most countries because everybody wants the US dollar, most of the world's trade is still conducted with the dollar. Why do you think they care so much about propping up the petrodollar?
Becuase the economy is fake. Technically everyone is just agreeing it won't. Which is good enough
How can this have no impact on inflation?
Because the money is already spent. We're just updating the balance sheets.
That's the whole joke of "Debt Ceiling". Its all just an accounting gimmick that we pretend to care about every arbitrary time intervals. The Treasury sells bonds at near-zero interest to the banks, who have an endless appetite for new borrowers. The banks get money at below-bond-rate from the Fed, collecting a vig on the balance for doing nothing. The Fed puts a new claim on the assets of the banks which are... US Treasury Notes.
Trillion Dollar Coin short-circuits the whole process and denies Fed-affiliated banks from collecting 0.25% interest on a trillion dollars. But the end result is the same. The inflationary impact comes from Federal Spending, not from Federal Borrowing. The Borrowing is just an accounting process to expand the volume of currency that we already planned to spend.
It's erasing debt, so no. Money means something entirely different once you leave the world of wages.
Money being printed doesn't contribute to inflation, circulating it does. The fed could, if they were feeling really silly, say "the federal reserve now holds a quadrillion dollars in reserve", have the treasury print a giant stack of symbolic trillion-dollar coins, and as long as they don't do anything with it, it's just a number on a balance sheet.
It's basically a made-up procedural response to a made-up procedural problem (the coin and debt ceiling, respectively). Now, if some dolt four or five terms down the line starts disbursing that cash to fund programs or cover costs instead of collecting taxes, which would allow the gov't to recirculate the already-existing money supply, then the money will enter the economy proper and inflation will start happening, proportionally to however much cash is injected.
because the money is not invested or spent, it doesn't do anything. it just raises the number on the US budget.
Put the trillion dollar coin in a vending machine and you get a trillion dollars worth of snacks. Easily enough to feed the world over.
Even if it then needed to be physically deposited at the New York Fed
christ on a bike every last detail about this is so stupid
all of everything is stupid
why not make it a quadrillion
or a vigintillion
mint The Infinity Dollar you cowards
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this will not happen
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even if it does happen, it will fix nothing. Good things do not happen in the bad things country
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It's like one of those person-sized checks they give winning contestants on game shows. Just as performative, too.
If it cannot be thrown like a trillion dollar platinum discus, what is even the point?
the scene from Now you see me 2 where they throw the card around a million times, but it's with a giant platinum frisbee.
I hope they let biden play with it before depositing it, he can roll it around with a stick like the old days
Lmao I love how absurd money is, genuinely lol. Just print it ya fuckin dolts
Here have this one, it's on me cause I'm a good friend https://i.imgur.com/0nXTOfr_d.webp
our NFT of the magic coin comrade
:heart-sickle: :heart-sickle: :heart-sickle:
Money is worth exactly what people believe it is. This is why Bitcoin is worth anything despite crypto clearly being full of scams based on nothing: belief. In the case of the US dollar, it’s the reserve currency of the world, which means there are many commodities that can only be purchased by holding US dollars. So the key players here are the world bank and the banks of foreign governments. Making a trillion dollars to spend, as much as it is, doesn’t put a huge hole in the money supply proportionately. Paying off all our debt at once, however, would like spook our allies and lead to petrodollar alternatives surfacing. In other words, it’s a matter of diplomacy, not economics. Paying off all our debt at once would be like your roommate walking up to you holding a suitcase and angrily handing you every dollar they’ve ever borrowed from you and asking “are we even?” That shit’s concerning whether they owe you the money or not and it does not imply that they will be involved with you much longer. Countries trading with each other and owing each other things is the oldest way in the book to prevent war. The newest way to prevent war, of course, is to be a nuclear power and spend enough on the military to fight your two biggest rivals at once.
