Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
No less respected economist than Paul Krugman is recommending the US pay down its national debt by minting a Trillion-Dollar Coin. He suggests it be made of platinum because that’s really valuable. I say it should be rubber, not only because “rubber check” accurately captures its value, but because there’s precedent.
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:
“Its exchange rate of eight Ningis to one Pu is simple enough, but since a Ningi is a triangular rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles along each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one Pu. Ningis are not negotiable currency, because the Galactibanks refuse to deal in fiddling small change.”
Obviously, we won’t call it a Ningi, that sounds weird (and we’d owe Doug Adams royalties). We’ll call it a $1 trillion dollar coin. But why stop at one? Why not go all out and issue 16 trillion-dollar coins to pay off the entire national debt completely?
And while we’re at it, why not raise the minimum wage to $100 so we’ll all be rich? And throw in free cosmetic surgery, paid for by Obamacare.
Rich, handsome, debt free . . . now THAT’s the kind of Hope and Change I was looking for.
Joe Doakes
Como Park.
I’m afraid to ask an esteemed economist like Prostetnic Vogon Krugman how we’re going to pay for a trillion dollars worth of platinum – or what that’ll do to the world’s platinum supply.
Fun with numbers – somebody had to do it.
1g bar of Pt = $80. Thickness of bar is 0.8mm. This means a $1,000,000,000,000 bar/coin will weigh 27,557,500lbs and will be 6,214 miles thick. In all history, about 12,500,000lbs of Pt were mined.
Am I the only one that thinks air in DC is severely lacking in O2? Is everyone in DC, DFL, MSM been replaced by Vogons?
“No less respected economist than Paul Krugman”
Bit of an ironic typo. In my mind, there IS no less-respected economist than Paul Krugman.
I’d love to see a ravenous bug-blatter beast of Traal romping through the NY Times offices. Meanwhile Washington is counting on the Infinite Improbability Drive to solve the deficit crisis.
Vote Beeblebrox.
States have to balance their budgets. A majority of states are run by conservatives.
Some conservatives (Steve Green, for example), say that they can’t quite figure out Obama’s governing philosophy.
It is simple. Spend money. Without deficit spending, he would be out of office in about a week. He cannot govern without spending a trillion or so dollars more than people are willing to be taxed. It’s not in his skill set.
And hey, I (or Mitch or Swiftee or anyone, really) could be elected and re-elected if we could do that. Turn off the dollar machine and his support collapses.
OK, so we can now count Paul Krugman in the “Weimar Republik” school of monetary policy. Don’t ya think that once a guy does that, he loses his right to be called an economist and can give back that Sveriges Riksbank prize back, not to mention his Ph.D., bachelor’s degree, high school diploma, and kindergarten graduation certificate–not to mention his voter registration card?
Col. Flagg
It really depends on your perspective as to how much you respect Krugman. If you have a basic knowledge of what a budget is you can see Krugman for the fool he is. If you believe that the way to prosperity is through maxing out all your credit cards then you probably think he is worthy of his Nobel.
Quite frankly, I’m surprised that Krugman didn’t suggest that Obama have the end of every rainbow checked for the pot of gold rumored to be there!
This platinum coin doesn’t have to be platinum, and absolutely does not need to contain $1T worth of platinum. This coin need have no intrinsic value, and that is essentially the point. Take an ordinary penny, have the US mint scratch-awl “$1,000,000,000,000.00” on it where the “one cent” is, and the deed is done. Sixteen of them should be just a little harder, but Obama could be the Prez who paid off the US debt!
Hmm… You may have somethign there JE. Not without precedent either. I have an authentic 1T Zimbabwe dollar bill – it even has an expiration date!
JE that may be a portent of things to come. There is a strong indication the remaining coins in circulation that have silver left in them, will be pulled and replaced with another that is made of cheaper metal. The silver will then be melted and sold on the open market to feed the Democrats ATM.
Sorry. Joe lost me at “No less respected an eonomist as Paul Krugman”. Obama gota Nobel peace prize. I give them both the same respect.