The US is a country, not a corporation. Interest payments should not come first... PEOPLE should.

[reformist2]

The notion that debt payments should be made ahead of social security, medicare or welfare payments is sickening.

[Warren Stupidity]

1. it is also the law.

But sickening or not, the facts are that a default on debt payments would be globally catastrophic and seriously irresponsible, especially as there is exactly zero reason for us to do so, other than criminal asshattery.

[dipsydoodle]

2. Welshing on sovereign debt never goes down well.

.

[reformist2]

3. All the more reason for Repugs not to go there. Dems should threaten default.

If I were Prez. Obama, I'd be saying: "I'll be damned if I'm going to make interest payments on the debt before I make sure our poor, sick and elderly are taken care of."

[dkf]

6. How do you get the $1 trillion dollars we spend over the amount we receive if we don't borrow?

How do we borrow if we don't pay on our bonds?

The Fed has just disallowed the Treasuries printing of a $1 trillion coin so that isn't going to fly.

[reformist2]

7. The Fed isn't the last word as to who controls the currency.

[dkf]

9. Yes they are... They won't credit the treasury for the coin.

So what was it that made the Obama administration strike the death knell of the platinum coin idea?

Many of us assumed it was killed as part of the political strategy of the White House. Perhaps the idea of minting a high-value platinum coin registered with internal polls as repulsive to the public. Or perhaps the administration shot down the idea in order to make it clear to Republicans that refusing to raise the debt ceiling would lead to a government shutdown.

Zeke Miller at Buzzfeed says that neither of these ideas is right. Instead, the idea was quietly put to rest by the Federal Reserve. Miller reports that a "senior administration official" claims that the "independent central bank would not have credited the Treasury's accounts for the vast sum for depositing the coin."

This is interesting. As Greg Ip pointed out, the platinum coin idea always was a challenge to the independence of the Fed. If it were undertaken, the Fed would basically be ordered by the Treasury to engage in monetary expansion. The Fed might even have to alter its open markets operations in order to sterilize the monetary impact.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100378214

[dkf]

4. Paying interest enables the payment of all else in a deficit economy.

If we couldn't sell our bonds, how do you propose we get the funds to pay for all the rest?

You really need to think this through.

[dmallind]

5. And if we default on US bonds, whence the money to fund benefits in future?

Right now the US can borrow all it wants at truly trivial cost. Since we are running a deficit, we need to borrow more to pay our way, including entitlements. That <1% interest rate on bonds would go up tenfold overnight if we ever defaulted at maturity. Silly idea not to pay debts.

Incidentally contrary to "common sense" idiocy, most of our debt and therefore interest payments are not to China. In fact the biggest holder, and interest beneficiary, of US debt by trillions of dollars is something you want to protect - the SSI fund. So you want to stop paying interest to it too?

[reformist2]

8. Umm, what good is the low interest rate if we don't spend the money on people that need it?

If I were Obama, I'd promise to make sure the elderly and poor were taken care of, to hell with the credit rating. If the rich & Republicans still want to stop Obama, the blame will be on them.

They wouldn't dare.

[dmallind]

10. Some of it is spent that way. It's a general fund. But not paying the interest would kill ALL