The Trillion Dollar Coin

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There's been numerous articles floating around the net space about the government minting a platinum coin worth 1-trillion dollars to help solve our nation's debt problems. And, yes, it's serious. So very, very serious.

What are the odds of this coin actually being minted? Hard to say, but it's being considered, and that's kinda scary - in a comical, cartoonish sort of way.

The platinum coin has at least the advantage of being a real, even viable solution to the nation’s fiscal problem, but that does not stop it from sounding intensely silly. When Congress cranked out the law that enables the Treasury secretary to mint collectible coins, to numismatists’ delight, they hardly envisioned this, but it’s technically legal. So if Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling, the president can print more coin money instead of borrowing it. You say, inflation, Josh Barro at Bloomberg says that the president can promise to melt down the coin as soon as this national nightmare is over*. It does not even have to be made of 1 trillion dollars’ worth of platinum. It can be small and portable. People have thought this through.
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Source.

*In other words, it won't ever be melted down. Ever.


So what are your thoughts on this coin? Should it really be considered? Is it too silly of an idea? Would it solve anything?
 
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These guys think they're so clever. This all fun and games until someone loses one in the couch or accidentally drops one in a vending machine.

Anyone up for a high-stakes coin funnel race at the mall?

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I don't know, but based up current platinum prices & maximum possible purity control they would have to print at least 430,000 lbs of platinum. However, that level of purity is impractical (the cost of money to create the high purity would devalue each coin pressing). Therefore, I think it's safe to say it would take over 1/2 a million lbs of platinum, which is about ten times the amount of platinum that the entire U.S. automotive industry uses in a year of manufacturing. Just some things to wonder about.
 
logan235711 said:
I don't know, but based up current platinum prices & maximum possible purity control they would have to print at least 430,000 lbs of platinum. ...
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In this article by CBS, it said that the coin wouldn't even use $1-trillion worth of platinum.
The coin itself does not have to literally be worth $1 trillion

It's common sense: just because there's a $99 difference in the value of a $1 and a $100 bill, the materials that are used to make them are worth the same. Translation: The $1 trillion dollar coin does not need to be made of $1 trillion worth of platinum.
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However, the same article said it would not cause inflation either because it wouldn't be out in circulation... until we Ocean's 11 the thing. INFJ Heist Night! Who's in?!
 
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Platinum coin... Platinum Chip... Oh my goodness... Keep that thing away from Mr. House and out of New Vegas.
 
Can someone explain to me how the Treasury can literally just create money to give to the Federal Reserve, and then have the Federal Reserve give the Treasury some money back, and somehow end up with a net increase in (borrowing) funds? Isn't that the same as saying that you have money because you say so?

Economics is so fucked up.
 
SealHammer said:
Can someone explain to me how the Treasury can literally just create money to give to the Federal Reserve, and then have the Federal Reserve give the Treasury some money back, and somehow end up with a net increase in (borrowing) funds? Isn't that the same as saying that you have money because you say so?

Economics is so fucked up.
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The federal reserve is not federal

It is a private corporation owned by private bankers. These bankers had a secret meeting on jekyll island where they drew up the federal reserve bill. they took it to congress and waited until the chamber was empty for recess then they got the bill passed

The bankers who own the federal bank also own banks in Europe and control the central banks there; it is all centrally controlled under the bank for International settlements (BIS)

These banking dynasties (ie families) are the same families that the north americans threw off in the revolutionary war:

"The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been that England took away from the colonies their money, which created unemployment and dissatisfaction. The inability of colonists to get power to issue their own money permanently out of the hands of George III and the international bankers was the prime reason for the Revolutionary War." -Benjamin Franklin

The bankers want the ability to print the money of nations and to control interest rates as they know that is the real power in a country, hence the words of the central banker Meyer Amschell Rothschild:

''Give me control of a nations money supply, and I care not who makes it’s laws.''

These guys know that to control the money is to control the game

They control the money supply of the US and yes since depegging from gold they have been creating money out of thin air. this policy cannot go on forever however as people eventually stop seeing a currency as credible....hence the fact many countries are trying to dump dollars and are boosting their gold reserves...they are anticipating a shift away from the dollar as the worlds reserve currency
 
http://www.opednews.com/articles/How-Benjamin-Franklin-Caus-by-Mike-Kirchubel-110711-773.html

Our American story begins calmly enough, by the mid 1700s, the Colonies were well established and fairly prosperous, there was full employment, no income tax, and prices were generally stable. Benjamin Franklin wrote, "There was abundance in the Colonies, and peace was reigning on every border. It was difficult, and even impossible, to find a happier and more prosperous nation on all the surface of the globe. Comfort was prevailing in every home. The people, in general, kept the highest moral standards, and education was widely spread." U.S. Representative, Charles Binderup, Unrobing the Ghosts of Wall Street, July 5, 1941.

When Franklin traveled to London in 1763, he saw a completely different situation. "The streets are covered with beggars and tramps," he wrote. He asked his friends how England, with all its wealth, could have so much poverty among its working classes. They replied that England had too many workers! The well-to-do were overburdened with taxes, and could not pay more to relieve the poverty of the unemployed workers. In a meeting with merchants and bankers at the British Board of Trade, members asked Franklin how the American Colonies managed to collect enough money to support their poor.

Franklin replied, "That is simple. In the Colonies, we issue our own money. It is called Colonial Scrip. We issue it in proper proportion to the demands of trade and industry to make the products pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner, creating for ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay to no one." Both quotes from Charles Binderup, Ibid. "It passed through no banker's hands, but was loaned to the people direct, thus saving banking toll and banking restriction of volume; nor are there any panics or fluctuations recorded.

Thomas Powell, M.P., of England, who had acted as governor and commander-in-chief of all provinces, in a book written by him in 1768, says in regard to this colonial system of money: 'I will venture to say that there never was a wiser or better measure, never one better calculated to serve the uses of an increasing country, and never was a measure more steadily pursued or more faithfully executed for forty years together than the loan office in Pennsylvania, formed and administered by the assembly of the province.'" Samuel Leavitt, Our Money Wars, 1894.
 
http://www.opednews.com/articles/How-Benjamin-Franklin-Caus-by-Mike-Kirchubel-110711-773.html

"Gold and silver are not intrinsically equal value with iron. Their value rests chiefly on the estimation they happen to be in among the generality of nations. Any other well-founded credit is as much an equivalent as gold and silver. Paper money, well-founded, has great advantages over gold and silver; being light and convenient for handling large sums, and not likely to have its volume reduced by demands for exportation." Benjamin Franklin.

"A legitimate government can both spend and lend money into circulation, while banks can only lend significant amounts of their promissory bank notes, for they can neither give away nor spend but a tiny fraction of the money the people need. When your bankers here in England place money in circulation, there is always a debt principal to be returned and usury to be paid. The result is that you have always too little credit in circulation to give the workers full employment. You do not have too many workers, you have too little money in circulation, and that which circulates, all bares the endless burden of unpayable debt and usury." Attributed to Benjamin Franklin - Ellen Brown and Reed Simpson, Web of Debt, 2008.

The "endless burden" of debt-based money issued by banks hits the economic nail on the head. The difference is that a government can "spend" money into existence without debt. It enters the economy and circulates endlessly, facilitating trade. Banks, however, by their very nature, can only "lend" money and then they demand it back, with interest, actually decreasing the circulating money supply. In England, ALL the money in circulation was "lent" into existence by the privately-owned Bank of England, which collected interest on every pound and penny in circulation. However, unlike a real loan, the Bank of England didn't demand the return of its bank note money, it was content just to sit back and collect interest on it - year after year after year forever.

The Bank lent the government the money it needed, in the form of paper bank notes and the government gave the bank an equal amount of interest-bearing government bonds as "collateral." The interest payments were made by taxing the citizens of England and her colonies, and the money continually flowed from the producers and workers, into the hands of the owners of England's bonds, the privately-held, Bank of England. This debt money system continually siphons the earnings of all of the producing classes and transfers it through the government - to the wealthy bankers in a manner few would recognize.
 
Policy wonks are debating whether a $1 trillion platinum coin would be a clever or insane way for President Obama to play hardball with Republicans in the upcoming debt limit battle.
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Hmm.
debt limit battle
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HMM.
battle
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Ah, there is our little problem.
 
Treasury must issue debt, while the Federal Reserve independently controls our nation's monetary printing press.
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Yeah...
That is exactly as it should be.
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Uh, no. There are just so many things obviously wrong with this writer's priorities.
 
I'm no lawyer, but the legal arguments seem wholly unconvincing. The language of the statute is clear, and in any case, the executive branch gets away with expansive actions in extreme times. During the financial crisis, for example, Treasury aggressively interpreted its authorities in order to bail out GM and Chrysler and to backstop money market funds.
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The financial crisis lies a mere half-decade towards the past and the national debt of the United States is 15,000,000,000+, does this not mean that I have been living in "extreme times" since birth? Things are not right and this writer is on some STRONG benzodiazepines or something.
 
Could someone help me understand how printing a trillion dollar coin would save us financially? Are we going to make it then pay someone off with it or something?
 
UBERROGO said:
Could someone help me understand how printing a trillion dollar coin would save us financially? Are we going to make it then pay someone off with it or something?
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A big amount of our countries debt is owed to our own Federal Reserve Bank. Which means we owe a large part of our debt to ourselves. The trillion dollar coin would be used to wipe out the debt we owe to ourselves, after we have eliminated the fake debt we owe to ourselves we will focus on the money we owe other countries.

We cannot use the platinum coin to pay off the debts we owe to other countries. But we can use the platinum coin to erase the debt we owe to ourselves.

I think...
 
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chulo said:
A big amount of our countries debt is owed to our own Federal Reserve Bank. Which means we owe a large part of our debt to ourselves. The trillion dollar coin would be used to wipe out the debt we owe to ourselves, after we have eliminated the fake debt we owe to ourselves we will focus on the money we owe other countries.

We cannot use the platinum coin to pay off the debts we owe to other countries. But we can use the platinum coin to erase the debt we owe to ourselves.

I think...
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I doubt that the Federal Reserves would accept such a thing. They will probably want more National Parks signed over to them.
 
UBERROGO said:
I doubt that the Federal Reserves would accept such a thing. They will probably want more National Parks signed over to them.
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I think you are kidding. I think...

The Federal Reserve is like part of our government. They were put in place to control our money supply. I don't think they would have a problem accepting a fake payment for a fake debt.
 
chulo said:
I think you are kidding. I think...

The Federal Reserve is like part of our government. They were put in place to control our money supply. I don't think they would have a problem accepting a fake payment for a fake debt.
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Do you mean they are similar to a part of our gov., or "hey man, like, they are part of our gov, bro." ?

Then why even mint a coin? Just tell them to erase it.
 
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