The Trillion Dollar Coin

Trillion Dollar Coin

To most the #mintthecoin idea just sounds really stupid. If we could just mint trillion dollar platinum coins any time we wanted then why not mint 16 of them and be done with the debt? Wouldn't it just make sense? The solution to our problems are right there. No need to ever worry about budget deficits. Seems almost criminal that our government has been holding out on us for so long. We for all these years have we been made to suffer and pay higher taxes? Most rational people however realize that this isn't a solution. There are so many problems with this, they are almost too numerous to name. I will name a few: I am pretty sure it doesn't align with the Constitution. Talking with my cousin +David Correia we concluded that even if the coin would be used to pay down debt, it would still be an appropriation of government funds. Only congress has that right under the Constitution. Speaking with +Tony Elam we concluded that the long term debt problem would still exist, that is if we only printed one coin to pay down debt. We are expected to run another trillion dollar deficit this year, so we would be back to a 16 trillion by the end of the year. +Peter Schiff said on his radio show that the federal reserve could not sell this coin to anyone, except back to the US government. Which is correct, no one would buy a coin worth $2000 in platinum for 1 trillion dollars. That is assuming the Federal Reserve would want to take a coin worth 1% of the value. No there is another reason the call for this call is happening.

The real reason for the call for #mintthecoin is to try and take away any leverage the republican have to try and force some fiscal sanity back into the budget. As I previously mentioned, the 99% of the public really doesn't want to pay for the current government they are receiving. How can I say that? Well I would liken it to buying any other consumer goods. People have been for a number of years clamoring for more portable computing, iPhone  iPad  and other such devices. They are happy in general to pay for them, even though they cost more. The service that comes with them cost more on a monthly basis. Where are the calls from the general public to have their taxes raised to pay the deficit spending? It doesn't exist, most of the talk revolves around figuring out how to get other people  the rich, to pay for the government everyone else wants for free. If the general populous doesn't want to pay for the government we have, and we have already taxed the rich more to "assist" in paying for the deficit. Then the last bit of the equation that hasn't been addressed is reducing spending to a more sustainable level. Even the republicans are not pushing for a balanced budget. There proposal would still run large deficits. It is not like we have had large deficits for a long time. The national debt has doubled in 8 years. So we have already tried large stimulus to prime the economy. We need to address the root causes of the deficit, even if that means as the republican want to do, which is in the long term. The #mintthecoin idea is simply to take away the leverage they have to push this forward, denial of raising the debt ceiling. Thank goodness that it is just talk and serious people will not put forth this silly idea or it would take an legitimacy that the US government has to our debtors that we will not simply return their investment into nothing by inflating it away.