Saturday, December 08, 2012

Democrat Magical Numismatic Thinking

If Printing our way doesn't work, these brilliant Democrat minds at work have come up with a wacky proposal to coin our way out:

The Trillion Dollar Coin

BizPac Review:

Right on the heels of the Jan. 2 fiscal cliff deadline will come an even bigger concern — raising the debt ceiling. Obama administration economists are seriously considering minting a trillion-dollar coin to settle the issue.

This indicates that these economists are complete morons.

The Washington Times succinctly reports and explains:

Welcome to Zimbabwe. This is not a parody — it is an actual report from the Washington Post:

Some economists and legal scholars have suggested that the “platinum coin option” is one way to defuse a crisis if Congress can’t or won’t lift the debt ceiling soon. ... Thanks to an odd loophole in current law ... the U.S. Mint would produce (say) a pair of trillion-dollar platinum coins. The president orders the coins to be deposited at the Federal Reserve. The Fed then moves this money into Treasury’s accounts. And just like that, Treasury suddenly has an extra $2 trillion to pay off its obligations for the next two years — without needing to issue new debt. The ceiling is no longer an issue.

“I like it,” says Joseph Gagnon of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “There’s nothing that’s obviously economically problematic about it.”

Sorry but that is absolutely insane. Did Gagnon get his economics degree from a crackerjack box? Has he ever heard of Gresham's Law or Zimbabwe?

Never mind that the Treasury gets (31 USC 5134 section (c)(3) seignorage, and the seigniorage on a trillion dollar coin would be pretty massive.

Now, were the trillion dollar coin to be truly worth a trillion dollars, here's an idea of what it would look like:

A single ounce of platinum is currently worth around $1,605.

To get to a trillion dollars worth of platinum would require a metal content of 42,723,634lb 6.2058oz - rounding off we get to 21,361 US Tons.

This is not a coin that would fit in your pocket, heck it won't fit on a truck.

Oh, and world total global supply of platinum is currently only around 7.9 million ounces, or 270 tons so we're going to be short by about 21,091 tons, and that's a lot.

Anything less than a coin that size and you're talking nonsense and magical thinking.

This also gives you an idea of how much trouble we're in considering our debt is far in excess of a trillion dollars, a trillion dollars is less than out current annual deficit.

It's creating something out of nothing by monetizing the debt and would be the ultimate con game. Expect massive inflation if they tried to go through with it.

Dealing with the debt and debt limit via a new magic coin or two isn't going to fix it, and instead will make it much worse.

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