Seigniorage Hack Could Resolve Debt Limit Crisis

UltraOne writes "With the US Senate voting to table the Boehner debt limit bill, the US is only a few days away from running out of cash to pay for all its obligations. Slate is reporting on a fascinating legal hack that could come in handy, described by blogger 'beowulf' back in January 2011. Seigniorage is the extra value added when a government mints a coin with a face value greater than the value of the precious metal contained in the coin. The statute governing the minting of coins contains a section (31 USC 5112(k) ) that authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to mint and issue platinum coins in any denomination or quantity. To keep the government from running out of money, Timothy Geithner could order a $5 trillion platinum coin struck and deposited at the Federal Reserve. The money could then be used to fund Federal Government operations (blog post contains legal details)."

Comments

Moving towards a post-scarcity future

[Paul Fernhout]

"The problem is that government spends more than it takes it."

Due to borrow and spend conservatives launching war rackets of choice?
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

Instead of tax and spend liberals who at least pay more as they go?

"Smaller government is not a bad thing."

Unless government is too small to account for externalities through taxes, subsidies, and regulation?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

And so we pay in our health bills and tax bills (and even inability to eat wild-caught mercurly laden fish) on the back-end the costs we should be paying up-front at the gas pumps and electrical outlets and supermarkets, in which case renewables would have been cheaper than fossil fuels since the 1970s and we would not be having such a health care crisis?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx

Or getting scammed by heart surgeons?
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/PCI_angioplasty_article.aspx

And scammed by dermatologists who are causing by some estimates 30 cancers for every melanoma they prevent?
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/cancer/

Due in part to lack of adequate investment in public health research?

Do US Republican generally wanting to privatize gains and socialize costs make them the worst sort of socialists?

"Also, Obama has no plan, he just criticizes other."

I agree that Obama has been a terrible president so far. He blew his chance to make big changes in the first few days by trying to negotiate with idealogues who would rather destroy the USA than lose an election. He could have just declared medicare covers anyone of any age his first day in office (as in, not enforcing age limits), and then moved on from there to ensuring everyone had a basic income (social security for all, withotu age limits) even if there are no more jobs, and moved on from there to bringing our troops home and shifting the US defense budget to the space program. :-)

Related:
http://www.amconmag.com/article/2005/mar/14/00017/
"This is no surprise, as [propertarian] libertarianism is basically the Marxism of the Right. If Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on altruism and collectivism, then [propertarian] libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion that one can run it purely on selfishness and individualism. ... The most fundamental problem with [propertarian] libertarianism is very simple: freedom, though a good thing, is simply not the only good thing in life. Simple physical security, which even a prisoner can possess, is not freedom, but one cannot live without it. Prosperity is connected to freedom, in that it makes us free to consume, but it is not the same thing, in that one can be rich but as unfree as a Victorian tycoon's wife. A family is in fact one of the least free things imaginable, as the emotional satisfactions of it derive from relations that we are either born into without choice or, once they are chosen, entail obligations that we cannot walk away from with ease or justice. But security, prosperity, and family are in fact the bulk of happiness for most real people and the principal issues that concern governments. [Along with health and community.]"

And:
"The Market as God: Living in the new dispensation"