NOBEL PRIZE WINNER PAUL KRUGMAN: Obama Must Be Ready To Mint The Trillion Dollar Platinum Coin

[grahamhgreen]

The movement to mint a trillion dollar platinum coin gets its biggest backer yet: Paul Krugman.

To back up for a moment, in case you're not familiar with the #MintTheCoin movement, the idea is that by using a technical loophole in the law, the Treasury could create a coin worth $1 trillion and deposit it in its bank account.

In a new post up titled Be Ready To Mint The Coin he writes:

It’s easy to make sententious remarks to the effect that we shouldn’t look for gimmicks, we should sit down like serious people and deal with our problems realistically. That may sound reasonable — if you’ve been living in a cave for the past four years.Given the realities of our political situation, and in particular the mixture of ruthlessness and craziness that now characterizes House Republicans, it’s just ridiculous — far more ridiculous than the notion of the coin.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/nobel-prize-winner-paul-krugman-obama-must-get-ready-to-mint-the-trillion-dollar-coin-2013-1#ixzz2HJa6qKsd

Not sure if this has been posted..... Another simple solution from Progressives - thank you very much!

[yurbud]

1. this makes more sense than borrowing money from the Fed and instantly owing them interest

Only the state should be in the business of creating money, not private banks.

[yurbud]

2. Isn't the banking system one of those third rails that send the rich into a homicidal frenzy?

If I had the power to make money out of thin air then loan it to my government and charge interest, I wouldn't want that threatened--but all of the rest of us should.

[bemildred]

3. Why not mint several? We could retire the entire national debt this way.

No more interest payments, no more worried creditors, we could pay it all back and start clean.

[grahamhgreen]

4. I'll take it.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

5. Why not a thousand billion-dollar coins?

Or a million million-dollar coins??

[bemildred]

6. I think the main objection is that it would MAKE CLEAR that our money is really just bullshit. nt

[DaveT]

7. A reasonable point

but perhaps too reasonable for our insane era.

Money is and always has been bullshit. A "medium" of exchange, it has no intrinsic value unless you happen to be stuck in the woods without toilet paper. Money is, by definition, an abstraction and I do not know anybody who really bothers to think through why money spends at the store.


I don't think that rational analysis of income and outgo really applies much any more in this age of Unfinanced Pointless Wars and bankers who send the concept of "collateral" down the memory hole. So a gimmick to trump the other guys' gimmick? I don't see it shaking anyybody's confidence in the value of money.

Who has confidence in anything now?

[bemildred]

8. It's a taboo. I've been chewed our here more than once for bringing it up.

You don't need confidence, it's legal tender. If you can use it to buy stuff and pay bills, that's all it's for, and you can.

But we can't run out, like you could when money was based on metal, because it's purely imaginary.

All you have to worry about is inflation, if there is no inflation, there is also not too much money chasing too few goods, hence not too much money at all.

But to admit it and proceed accordingly would destroy our current power structure, which is rooted in the notion of hard money and privileged wealth.