Comments about ‘Mint trillion-dollar coins to solve debt ceiling?’

Interesting article. I can see the point that: Raising the debt ceiling and printing more money are the same thing. And most folks see the absurdity of printing more money, but do not understand the debt thing.

economics 101. printing more money increases inflation. increasing government spending increases inflatiion. this is the silliest idea ever.

Someone receiving a credit card with a specified limit cannot overspend and demand that the credit card company increase the borrowing limit. But government does that all the time with the threat of financial collapse if the limit is not increased. The obvious answer is to manage and control spending but addicted spenders place the blame on limited credit.

Wow, there are a whole lot of posters here with severely limited knowledge of economics.....

I nominate that Richard Nixon's beautiful face grace this coin since he took us off the gold standard and sorta started this whole mess.

Wow.., this plot seems like a story I read as a kid.., it could maybe work again? All we have to do is find the Dark Lord Sauron's playbook and stoke up the forges with the fires of Mt. Doom. These should be hot enough to forge a few Trillion Dollar Platnium rings (they really don't need to be coins) and then decide who get's to be the Dark Lord Sauron. After we hold elections for the position, we could then distribute the Ruling Rings to those who would be satisfied to accept the subordinate roles as Elf Queens, Wizards and Kings. Maybe this time we rewrite the plot to keep the pesky hobbit-like creatures from feeling self-righteous enough to unravel the whole thing. Or better yet let's just keep the Ring in place on the Dark Lord's finger in our rewrite of this saga..,

@ Albert Maslar

Your analogy is not accurate in that there is no outside party (like a credit card company) needing to act. A more proper analogy would be a husband and wife spend money like crazy and then when the bills arrive the following month the husband decides he's not going to pay them. What would you advise in this case? Should he pay them or not?

In the 10th century or so a Chinese dynasty invented paper currency. They were then destroyed and overthrown in the ensuing inflation they created when they started printing out lots and lots of money.

Just a thought.

Inflation is when the economy adjusts the money supply with the amount of total wealth. If the government minted extra currency that created enough inflation so that our money was worth only half as much, the government could then take their minted currency and pay down the debt in devalued money. We would still have the same amount of money on paper, but it would be worth half as much.

It is a deceptive way to charge everyone a flat tax of 50%.

STUPIDITY REIGNETH!

There's only one face that could even be considered to grace the new trillion-dollar coin: Obama's. He's the one who said "trillion is the new billion."

procuradorfiscal,

Not so fast. The BLM *manages* land and subsurface mineral estates. Actual ownership of the land is a mix of federal/state governments and private parties. Much of the value of the land ($44T sounds fantastically overvalued) comes from rights to mineral/energy extraction -- commonly owned by private parties.

Because the land valuation is tied to private party ownership interests, can you convince anyone to buy land that they can't fully utilize for themselves? (Unless the government expropriates the mineral rights from private parties, but that's far too leftwing an idea for capitalists like yourself!)

Additionally, who are your buyers? Assuming the land is worth what is claimed, who is out there willing to buy enough to bail out the national debt? That's a staggering amount of money.

And if it all goes up for sale, what happens to the land value (not to mention the rest of the country's real estate) with a glut of pristine natural real estate on the market? You just wiped out a good chunk of your value simply by flooding the market with the product.

Between that proposal and trillion-dollar coins, some Econ 101 classes are in order.

Actually the inflation thing with the coin is a misconception. The trillion dollar coin would not spur massive inflation. The reason is that it doesn't actually increase the money supply since it's held by the treasury (not going into circulation) and they'd turn it into treasury bonds like any other debt. The effect on inflation would be no different than just increasing the debt ceiling by a trillion.

@JBJeep
That's just silly. Obama is not allowed to spend a trillion dollar coin any way he sees fit. He still has to abide by the spending legislation set forth by Congress.

@Brave Sir Robin
The person on the coin has to be deceased so Obama and my original pick (Boehner) are out. I'd go with Reagan in that case since he's the one who started this recent trend of building massive deficit increases.

atl134: I rarely agree with you, but Reagan is the right choice. Not that this argument has any merit.