Slashdot Mirror
Congressman Introduces Bill To Ban Minting of Trillion-Dollar Coin
Dainsanefh writes with news that the new Congress isn't wasting any time getting back to work. From the article: "Lawmakers are still positioning themselves for a debt ceiling fight in a few months, but one Republican congressman wants to snuff out a particular idea immediately: the U.S. Treasury minting $1 trillion platinum coins to avert a debt ceiling showdown. Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) has introduced a bill to specifically ban President Barack Obama from minting the coins. The trillion-dollar coin has been previously discussed on Slashdot:"
It's a long way from introducing a bill to getting it through Congress and signed by the President.
first
“This scheme to mint trillion dollar platinum coins is absurd and dangerous, and would be laughable if the proponents weren’t so serious about it as a solution,” Walden said in a statement. “My bill will take the coin scheme off the table by disallowing the Treasury to mint platinum coins as a way to pay down the debt.”
I couldn't agree more, we need to reign in this insane spending. But, you know, I would like to know why Congressman Walden voted against limiting funding for the war in Afghanistan? Probably because he's actually for spending taxpayer money, increasing the debt and then trying to stick the president with the bill at the end of the night so he looks like a dumbass. Well, too bad, you're all equal dumbasses when it comes to fiscal policy. All of this is just childish. The Republicans made deals with the Democrats to spend spend spend on both sides and now they want to act like they've been trying to stop spending all along. And it's getting ridiculous. And Republicans have a brilliant plan to solve all the problems by blocking any legislation and flirting with a second recession? Burn in hell, you're just as responsible if not more responsible for the insane spending (you're still writing blank checks for one of dubya's religious crusades).
My work here is dung.
You know that war you're fighting? The one with no point or purpose?
Why don't you just stop?
Like, just pack it up. Leave. Go home.
Instead of cutting a bunch of little growths, why not just take out the tumour and save the effort? No one would blame you. No one would care. Oh sure we'll make fun of you for a bit, but it'll be forgotten, or rewritten. No one will really be that upset by it.
Go on. We're here for you.
Coming soon to a rap song near you...
....US Mint strikes $1.0 Trillion titanium coins.
Would be more practical I think. But still, this sounds like madness. The end is near I'm afraid.
... there's US elected officials.
WHO nominates these guys?
WHO votes for them?
All over Europe people are rioting in the streets, protesting the actions of their politicians. Why in God's name aren't Americans doing the same??
Three Squirrels
"On October 20, 2009, it was reported that Walden was the first Member of Congress to contract the H1N1-A (Swine Flu) Virus.[8]"
Oddly appropriate.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
This really sounds collectible. (Have to have it appraised)
Even if it got to the President's desk with a Veto-proof majority, he could order the minting well in advance, and the Mint would have it done.
Heck, if I was Obama, I'd order up a collector's set of Jillion Dollar Coins just to fuck around with the collection of horse's asses that is the GOP.
I can't believe anybody is even seriously considering this. Our government has become the biggest cluster fuck in the history of the world, and it will be the end of us if it is not reined in soon.
The constitution grants the power to coin money to the congress, not the executive.
I mean, why should the United States of America resort to legal loopholes ?
Why can't America just face the reality as it is - that it is spending way too much money than it is making??
How long do you think America can keep spending the money it doesn't have?
I mean, even if America get the minting of quadrillion-dollar plutonium ingot going, the world doesn't have to "buy" it.
All of us balance our own checkbook at the end of every single month, and try our best to live within our means.
Why can't America?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
You could totally see the Secretary of the Treasury going down to the vending machine having done an all nighter to buy a candy bar. He ends up depositing six trillion dollar coins and all he gets is a Hundred Grand in return.
God spoke to me
It would suck to lose that between your cushions or on a roller coaster ride! And how would you get change at the grocery store? This could at least help with funding the Death Star if that petition passes.
The G
Will it work in a snack machine?
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
Imagine the lobbying that will go on from the vending machine industry, bridge toll industry, Salvation Army donation collectors, etc. They want these new coins badly.
FAIL!
The Republicans will balance out the savings from not minting trillion dollar coins with plenty of pork.
that'll get you a lot of gumballs. coins generally are used most often in vending machines these days. i can't think of any other use for them. they'll probably be rejected by coinstar machines
...though I'm not sure if $5 trillion worth of bitcoins actually exist.
What about a trillion and one dollar coin? How about a Trillion dollar bank note? How about making a pebble in the white house garden worth a trillion dollars?
The wording will be interesting.
...it's too much.
"I'd just like to emphasise that taking a million years isn't a metaphor here..." -Rich Bradshaw
Can't they make ......
- plastic coins
- wooden coins
- ceramic coins
- glass coins
- compressed recycles paper coins
I want to plant this unsavory image in your mind: Rep. Wilson has taking the podium in the House chamber, unzipped his pants, and is waving his dysfunctional penis at everyone in the room, along with the television audience on CSPAN. As each House member (yes, it is a pun) responds to him, they also expose themselves and start failing around so that everyone starts looking at their genitals. Soon they are all yelling and competing so that everyone will look at them more then any other idiot in the room.
This is pretty much what this proposal is all about: a mass outbreak of useless posturing that gets in the way of anything meaningful. I think we would, in fact, be better off if they were behaving like mentally disordered perverts. At least they would not be pretending to be "doing the peoples business", and would be acting out their true egomaniac personalities. The empty outcome would be identical with both activities, and exposing themselves in public would be much more honest.
Why is Snark Required?
Maybe the president can sign an executive order to stop congress critters from driving drunk and picking up hookers when they are supposed to home with their family. It will do just as much good.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
is becoming an increasingly bad comedy show.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
(One of Castro's workers tells him some men with a trillion dollar bill are here to see him.)
Mr. Burns: Oh, so the island's not for sale, eh? Well, will you at least permit us to live in your socialist paradise?
Castro (in disbelief): You talking about Cuba?
Mr. Burns: All we ask is preferential treatment because of my fabulous wealth!
[Burns holds the trillion dollar bill up.]
Castro: May I see?
Mr. Burns: Ho ho ho, see with your eyes, not with your hands!
Castro: Please, we are all amigos here!
Homer: Mr. Burns, I *think* we can trust the president of *Cuba*...
Mr. Burns: [hands it to Castro, and waits a couple of seconds.] Now, give it back.
Castro: Give what back?
Mr. Burns: D'oh...
(The three men are on a crudely made raft in the middle of the ocean headed back home.)
Homer: It's hard to believe there's a place worse than America, but we found it!
Mr. Burns: Yes, I, too, feel renewed appreciation for the good old US of A. Oppression and harassment are a small price to pay to live in the land of the free.
Smithers: Sir, aren't you facing some serious jail time?
Mr. Burns: Well, if it's a crime to love one's country, then I'm guilty. And if it's a crime to steal a trillion dollars from our government and hand it over to communist Cuba, then I'm guilty of that too. And if it's a crime to bribe a jury, then so help me, I'll soon be guilty of that!
Homer: God bless America!
--"The Trouble with Trillions"
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
Banks. People that charge interest on loans. It's just lazy rent seeking. But it adds no value to the economy and only serves as a means of concentrating capital into a few wealthy folks. Like, do you really believe that the the only people that work are the people that push buttons on Wall Street, right before they beg for a bailout. Yep, sounds about right to me. I think a 47% that makes sandwiches at Wawa does more useful work than a lot of people that work at brokerages.
This is my sig.
Just throwing that out there.
This is my sig.
Obama: OK, fine, you win. We won't mint any $1000000000000 coins. *turns to SecTreas* Mint me a couple $999999999999 coins, would ya?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
minting the coin should be mandatory, just to stick it to that dude
I agree, the minting of a trillion dollar platinum coin is rediculous. But so is holding the good faith and credit of the United States hostage to further far right wing ideas and policies. Obama won the election. The only reason the house is still in the hands of the Republicans is a decades long plan of re-districting or as I call it "rigging" of the electoral process in many states of the U.S. Face it Repubs, reform now or go down the sh*thole of history.
My karma is bad. Don't get too close!!!
You know it's a dumb idea. The Nobel Prize foundation lost a lot of credibility when they gave him the award for Economics, and lost the rest of it when they gave the peace prize to President Drone Strike.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
This entire concept of being able to mint a trillion dollar coin (because it's platinum and not gold, they don't have to go with the currently fixed price of 1 ounce for 42 dollars or something like that, so they want to do 1 ounce of platinum for 1,000,000,000,000 dollars) is clearly unconstitutional, it's terrible economics, it's horrendous admission that even minimal pretense of actually following the law in government is dropped at this point.
I mean this coin would be minted by the Treasury basically, so the Congress is no longer even taxing the people to run its insane business, it just creates money out of thin air. Of-course that's what the Fed has been doing for the Congress since 1917 anyway, but at least there was a pretense that the Fed can SHRINK the balance sheet by selling the Treasury bonds it holds......
No more. No more interest rates either I take it, because it's no longer debt that is created, it's actual currency without it being a liability on the balance sheet. No more can the Fed PRETEND that it can shrink the balance sheet (it can't do it now either, but at least now they can pretend like they can sell the bonds and get the dollars out of circulation, of-course it's all a pretense, they won't ever do it because that would annihilate the current fake economy that USA runs, would force gov't actually to stop spending too).
This is inflation in purest form, no more "full faith and credit of USA" that's because it's not credit and what faith can there be once the government itself drops the pretense and prints money?
Of-course the new new "economics" is all Keynesian, they don't want to admit that it's a sham, there is no such thing, Keynesian ideas to economics are what astrology is to astronomy.
The government lies about the CPI, the inflation, the GDP, it's all a huge scam. The bond bubble is being inflated, the crisis that will hit next is the currency and debt crisis and of-course minting a Trillion dollar coin (money out of thin air that has nothing to do with production, no different than paper by the way, just add zeros) is just debasing of currency.
USA will either stop government spending and allow the economy to restructure or it will destroy its currency and its credit worthiness with interest rates shooting up through the stratosphere. This will happen and a Trillion dollar coin may just trigger the bond bubble to burst.
signature
it's a loophole in the current law that doesn't limit the denomination of platinum coins. so it has to be a platinum coin, although not necessarily $1 trillion exactly.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
...the new Congress isn't wasting any time getting back to work...
Please define "wasting time" and "work".
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Don't ban minting of high-denomination bullion coins "per se." Instead, ban minting of bullion coins with a per-coin face value more than, say, 200% of the metal value or $1 + the metal value, whichever is higher.
Even without the "trillion dollar coin" the Mint could issue 10 billion $100 teeny-tiny gold coins, each with a bullion content of $1, and put them on deposit with the treasury. It's a little more work but it's the same principle. If the mint were restricted to the higher of a 100%- or $1- markup, they'd have to actually FIND half a trillion dollars worth of gold to pull this off, or make a trillion $1.01 coins that contained a penny's worth of gold. The first option would require a LOT of precious metal. The 2nd option would probably still cost $0.10-$0.15 per coin, or $15B to "create" $1T money to deposit with the treasury. Neither one could be done quietly or cheaply.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
If you print money, wages never keep up with the resulting inflation. If you are rich you have assets which will appreciate in value. The rich will never be hurt by these policies. Printing money is a secret tax on the poor and middle class.
who sells platinum 'ink' for these new fangled 3D printers?
Your "balanced checkbook" does not apply when discussing macroeconomic terms. The key issues are inflation, supply, demand, and employment. Right now, there isn't enough demand to keep up with supply and therefore unemployment is high (gross simplification). As long as inflation is not out of control, printing money and spending it on government programs (including giving it to the poor and elderly to stay warm and health and not hungry) is the best approach.
Your proposal, to "balance the checkbook" will result in massive cuts, reducing consumer spending, reducing demand, causing an excess of supply, so industry will cut costs, reducing employment, reducing revenues, so the checkbook will need to be balanced again. Repeat cycle till there is a great depression.
Summary: When there isn't demand, the only person who can create demand is the federal government which must go on a buying (spending) binge until things get better and stop when inflation shows up. The time to fix the debt is when the economy is booming and you have a surplus. At the macroeconomic level, there are self-reinforcing cycles and they require active intervention to make the system work "right". And there are many variable which keep throwing the system into loops.
Actually, from an economics pov, a trillion-dollar coin thing might actually work. Given that the last couple of rounds of quantitative easing had zero impact on inflation, and that we're in a liquidity trap, it's entirely possible that no inflation would result. The reasoning is that government spending is what causes inflation (in large part... fiscal policy), and since neither quantitative easing or seigniorage (the trillion dollar coin idea) changes that necessarily, inflation should hold steady. The money supply would only increase as congress spends it, which is about the same as now, in effect, since congress has been spending for years without paying the bill.
I expect a lot of flames now... Yes there are flaws in the plan, but I am interested in seeing this idea explored in depth (pro and con) by economics experts. The fact that so many people, particularly Republicans, call it absurd while continuing to merely kick the can down the road makes me think (perhaps out of spite) that maybe there's something in that proposal that can finally break this vicious cycle.
We can tell from other parts of the world that simply focusing on austerity makes things worse, not better. But continuing to simply raise the debt ceiling while risking people's retirement savings in government bonds, isn't good either. Except for the possibility of some inflation, and the question as to it's legality (since it would effectively break the Fed's power), PCS seems like quite a decent way out. Or else we should just admit that our grand experiment has failed and throw in the towel.
Watch this touchdown drive.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Is the government can't save money. Part of a sound personal budget is saving money in good times so it can be spent in bad times. Fair enough, but the government can't do that. It is meaningless for the entity that mints money to "save" it. If the government printed, or rather simply changed the entry in a database, so they had more money, but then didn't put that money in to circulation and "saved" it, it would have the effect as if they'd done nothing. If instead they actually took money out of circulation, kept it when they collected taxes or what have you, it would lead to deflation which is a very, very bad thing.
So what does the government do? Well it borrows. When the government "saves" what it does instead is to pay down the amount of outstanding debt. Then when it "spends savings" it issues more debt.
That is how it works. You can't compare public accounts to private ones because they function different. You can't demand that the government run itself the same way you run your personal finances, because they aren't the same.
That isn't to say that the government doesn't need to keep borrowing reasonable, but it is very different than personal borrowing.
Because the same group that controls the budget, controls it. Congress sets both, and there is just no reason to have the debt ceiling in that case. It would only be useful if some other party controlled it. It is just a position for political grandstanding as it stands. There is no point to having a limit on someone if that person is the one who sets the limit and can raise it as they please.
It should just be eliminated.
This is way, way too late. (As in, 2 or 3 years too late.)
My feeling is that Obama
1.) Has a plan B. Maybe this is it, maybe not, but you can be sure it has been vetted by actual lawyers, not just Slashdot, and
2.) Merely the existence of the Plan B will make it unnecessary to ever use it but
3.) Right now he is benefiting from the brewing Republican civil war, so there is no reason to reveal Plan B for the time being.
I often hate the Republicans, but it's time to get fiscally responsible. Or we could all be joining the Boehner Waterworks.
Kind of sad we have to also borrow a trillion a year to get by.
Well here the thing, if you have the means to international trade, you would probably skim a margin off the top for yourself too. The $ is the international trade currency and the margin you skim off was the inflation between the time the goods are ordered and the time they are delivered.
The inflation is just money printing, we can dress it up, but if the economy is making less money than its spending then it is just printing money.
Now you can say it's a bad thing, but it *was* the cost of doing business, and it was the price price paid for a stable trade currency and nobody really mined the slight advantage it gave the US. As long as it was small, it was like the cost of transferring money through the banking system, a minor overhead.
However, you haven't made an export surplus since Clinton left office, Bush and in particular Cheney decided they could print as much as they want, went crazy with the spending, and cut taxes at the same time. Now you have those same idiots in Congress they won't raise taxes, they won't cut Medicare and Military the two big areas that are increasing the deficit.
So the money supply is ramping up, and Obama can't cut it, because what replaces it? You've become dependent on that little fee for world trade, only its not little anymore, it's ALL of the US growth and considerably more, given the US minus its government inflation is shrinking!
So he's playing the slow game, and that's probably the only thing you can do at this point. Fast cuts and you crash, no cuts and you crash, slow cuts in spending, slow increases in taxes and do that long enough to bring it back to balanced.
Gary Cooper and Mark Twain.
Hope Barry doesn't lose it in a sewer grate.
More like the 'I own your a$$' coin our Debtors put on their smug mantles.
when you can have a BILLION dollar coin?? (kisses pinky)
At the bottom of the page Slashdot gives me this piece of advice:
"The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable." -- John Kenneth Galbraith
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
No matter how well they guard it, the risk vs reward will be off the scale!
...Just give inflation and the penny a chance, we'll get there.
Total from the Pentagon budget: $210 billion per year. I'm concentrating on the Pentagon because they suck up more than half of discretionary spending.
I'm sure there are other savings that could be had, but nothing that will come close to what could be cut from the Pentagon.
" In fact the top 10% of earners pay 70% of ALL taxes and the top 50% pay 98%"
False it's only "Federal Personal Income Tax" that they pay most of, the tax that hits rich people with independent/self employed incomes. The bottom pays payroll taxes which aren't counted, factor those in and rich people pay less than their share.
This is a misleading Fox talking point designed to deceive, that you've added some more deception to.
Basically I'm calling you a liar.
And your repetition of the 48% lie (and it's grown to 50%) means your aware you're lying.
This is the useless crap Congress actually makes time for. The President can't order a Trillion dollar coin be struck so it's a waste of time. This is another attempt to damage the President. Now the story will be that Obama planned to pay the billions by striking this mythic trillion dollar coin. The conservatives will believe it because they want to believe it. Paranoia and fear rules this country. Common sense left the building some time ago.
Don't guard it. What would somebody actually do with it if they stole it? It isn't like they could just walk into a bank and deposit it. It is hard enough to find places willing to accept $100 bills...
why were you watching fox ;)
Seems easier to just kill on sight !
not LoL
The president should allow the PCS (Platinum Coin Seigniorage) loophole to be patched ONLY if the both of the following happened:
1. Remove the debt ceiling
2. Repeal the Federal Reserve Act
The existence of the PCS loophole threatens the monopoly power of the Federal Reserve, and the Ron Paul people should be PUSHING for this.
New Economic Perspectives
Nobody was taking PCS (Platinum Coin Seignorage, the semi-official name of this loophole) seriously, but once this guy come up and say he is trying to propose a bill to ban PCS, everybody is looking at it and come to the conclusion that this might be a legitimate option.
New Economic Perspectives
just last week.
http://news.yahoo.com/idaho-senator-mike-crapo-admits-drunken-driving-virginia-174101503.html
New Economic Perspectives
A trillion dollar coin at today's market value for platinum would weigh millions of pounds each.
This is many many orders of magnitude out of the realm of possibility.
Walden is an out of touch moron.
The day after the mall shooting in Oregon, he sent out a general e-mail saying how he prevented the UN from grabbing control of the Internet.
We've already spent the money, the debit ceiling just is a debate on if we pay it back. No wonder the credit rating was down graded. God this pisses me off so much.
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
If you newline loans have no value, don't get one, and pay no interest. If it has no value TO YOU, you don't buy it and don't pay for it. Easy, huh?
For someone who wants to build a factory, or a ship, a bakery or practically anything else useful, a loan DOES have value. The banana you had for breakfast didn't swim here, it was carried on a ship, built with a loan. No loans means no ships which means no bananas, no sugar, no coffee, etc. if YOU don't find a loan useful, though, don't get one. Simple as that.
Ps - are you also angry at lingerie makers, because you personally don't have a use for lingerie?
Lets go all out and make all of our debts magically disappear with the minting of a precious little coin?
BTW, can I do this with my credit card debt? One of those coins from the carnivals should do the trick!
This could have been a discussion about the power of money creation being taken away from the Federal Reserve and returned to the US treasury where it belongs, but alas, not one commentator has mentioned this aspect.
Ask yourself, why should the government have to issue a T-bill which it has to repay with interest when it wants to create money? Why can't the treasury just create the money required for the government to cover it's deficit spending?
The reason is because this would prevent the banking cartels that literally own the Federal Reserve (yes I know what literally means - the Federal Reserve is privately owned - look it up) to get their cut. First they take their "Primary Dealer" fees on the sale of the t-bill, and then they get their claws on the actual money via the Fed which they loan out at interest.
As suspicious as this is, don't think Obama won't do it, because they've done it before. Clinton's "balanced" budget, for example, consisted of writing a half-trillion dollar IOU to the social security trust fund. In effect, he printed a $500 billion bill, then traded that for $500 billion in real money, which he spent, and called that balanced.
A trillion dollar coin at today's market value for platinum would weigh millions of pounds each.
Is that before or after the production of 1644 of the coins?
Realizing that the production of a trillion dollar coin is probably totally impractical, because not all the nation's debt is owed to one creditor, or did China consolidate it all now???
Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., announced today that he plans to introduce a bill that would make it illegal to mint high-value platinum coins as a means to paying down government debt.
OK, so instead of minting a high-value platinum coin, how about gold coins then, in $1 billion denominations. 16,440 of them, please.
Seriously, if you're going to pass a law about it... make the rule an absolute LIMIT on how much dollar value the mint is allowed to produce in currency per year.
How big would a $100 bill have to be for the material to actually be worth $100? I would say that is also outside the realm of possibility. The bill would be impractically large.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
The real reason why they want to stop Obama from printing coins is that they don't want the government printing it's own money. The Banksters have a good monopoly money that is highly leveraged: meaning that less than 10% of today's money is physical and so if people want to withdraw, less than 10% would end up with anything in their hands. The government, on the other hand, could print "non-fractional" fiat money, which would destroy the fractional fiat. Fractional fiat cannot compete for the same reason that people want to hold gold: because its fully redeemable physical money. It doesn't matter that its value is only legally declared.... the reason the banksters are afraid of this "coin idea" is because of the idea , that I say above, where the government can print its own cash and side-step the private federal reserve.
The Trillion and one dollar coin!
Austerity didn't help UK nor Hoover. It may be counter-intuitive, but sometimes life is like that.
Table-ized A.I.
>I mean, even if America get the minting of quadrillion-dollar plutonium ingot going, the world doesn't have to "buy" it.
Yes it does. Period. USD is default currency. US can spend whatever it wants; you can't run out of pins in a bowling alley.
you dont seem to get that one day the boring is gonna stop anyhow might as well get over this when it might not be as bad or cause an actual revolution.
ya know all those places build commercial craft they will ahve to survive on that...like every other business.
SIDES no one is buying into that f35
no really how much have you in effect wasted on it this is the exact reason you need to get over yourselves and DO THE CUTS NOW...before your so far down the rabbit hole you affect the security of the free world as NON free goes on a rampage when your down and out for a short time.
the making of which employs half the usa and the economy takes off...
of course when done they have to vut it into lil parts to pay everyone
HEY didnt they already have smaller coins...haha
First, it's flatly unconstitutional, via the 14th Amendment:
Raising the "debt ceiling" isn't making for new spending, it's paying for spending already passed by Congress. Secondly, Obama is perfectly aware of this. Which means this is nothing more than the latest dance in corrupt neoliberal theater between the two parties.
Let the government coin or print all the money they want to spend. No more deficit. Sure we'll have inflation but so what? Inflation, taxes, same diff.
While the distribution of taxes between different particular federal taxes has varied considerably, overall US federal taxes have fluctuated between just over 20% and just under 15% of GDP in the period since 1945. It has not followed your description of "keep going up and up and up".
Why does there have to be a physical representation for this extra money? What stops a government just saying "we've now got $1tn extra dollars"? When did money, which is an abstract concept that we humans invented, get so out of our control? Or would it just not work any other way?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
>>> Why can't America just face the reality as it is - that it is spending way too much money than it is making?? >>>
You (and a few millions others) could for your part face the reality that getting liquidity is not same as authorization to spend.
Why they gotta be black? Is that some stab at Obama? Fucking racist.
one trillion dollar coin
yes, americans are that stupid
Audit every member of Congress.
Strip everyone that fails of their citizenship.
Congress people working for the anational banking cartel are hostile enemy agents.
The problem is not spending. The problem is politics of financing it.
Public debt would be in good shape if Bush tax cuts would have not been implemented. See the graph in this page. And Contrary to "Entitlement Society" Rhetoric, Over Nine-Tenths of Entitlement Benefits Go to Elderly, Disabled, or Working Households
Unnecessary wars and overblown and ineffective internal security apparatus are expensive, but surprisingly not even they could not cause fiscal crisis. (Unfortunately) America is so rich that it has money to blow into wars and still go on. What we should do is to fix healthcare. It would not be even hard; Just look at what others are doing and do the same. This is just absurd.
Just increase taxes and cut war spending and America is fine: 2013 United States federal budget / Total revenues and spending.. This crisis is fundamentally just political. This problem is fundamentally caused by GOP and it's lost coherence. John Boehner has no authority to negotiate with Obama, nobody in GOP has any authority to negotiate.
Dyslexics have more fnu.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-eYBZFEzf8
The problem is politics of financing the spending.
Even with unnecessary wars and with serious economic downturn public debt would be in good shape (look at the graph) without Bush tax cuts.
There are some problems that must be fixed in long term but it has more to do with emulating other countries, than just cutting spending. We need to just emulate others and fix this sillyness.
We can fix public budged easily with just small increase to the taxes.
Dyslexics have more fnu.
How big would a $100 bill have to be for the material to actually be worth $100?....
Paper money had it's history based on trade in for gold or silver. It's out of the realm of this article to discuss why that's not the case now.
Entirely different are the current standards with precious metal coins.
As of now they are based on a per ounce price and there's no way to change that short of something unseen before in a trading market.
To do what you say with platinum would require removal of it's status as a precious metal. Seems unlikely.
I want a trillion dollar coin.... :(
Just how big a pair of pants would I need to hold this new coin? And just how obscure a female do they plan on putting on this coin? How about the first ugly female to spit tobacco juice in the Mississippi River?
E Proelio Veritas.
Clearly this topic was going to lead to nothing but various different tribes of Americans shouting at each other, and the rest of the world just rolling their eyes, why even post it in the first place?
What these people don't want to acknowledge is that there's no way someone can work 100 times as hard as someone else who is working full time, and so to say that someone obtained 100 times as much income from their work in some legitimate way is ridiculous.
People who are rich simply aren't rich because of their own hard work. Other people made that money, and they simply obtained it via agreements they made with people who otherwise had no choice.
Desperately need a job? I'll offer you one that pays 10% less than you deserve for doing it, and you'll take it because 90% is better than 0%, and honestly, everyone who is offering work is doing the same thing because we know jobs are in demand. We keep things that way by requiring everyone to work overtime rather than hiring additional employees. By reducing the pay of thousands of employees just that 10%, I "earn" for myself hundreds of times what any of them makes. ...and I deserve it too, dammit, because I'm so smart that I know how to "run a business." It's quite easy, just pay people as little as possible and make sure that's possible by not employing too many of them, but for some reason those lazy fucks on welfare can't seem to figure it out for themselves. Instead they want me to pay more in taxes so that it can be paid to them in welfare.
Honestly, I think the best way to deal with the "unemployment crisis" is to make it illegal for anyone to work more than 32 hours a week. My 62 year old mother is working 7 days a week because she's one of the "lucky" ones to have a job, and the factory she works for just doesn't want to hire more people. There's more than enough work out there. Those with jobs would love to have 3 days off a week, and those without would love to work 4 days a week. Let's just bring the two together. A happy side-effect will be that there is actually demand for employees, forcing the free market to begin functioning again, and driving up wages.
Right. Because if we had just let the banks fail, then people wouldn't be able to borrow money. whoops.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Yes, I love when people try to tell me how it's so much cheaper to buy fresh food and cook your own meals.
Usually they're forgetting one of two things:
1. It isn't the volume of food, it's the calorie content that feeds people. In that sense, things such as lettuce are incredibly expensive. ...and it's usually soon enough that you need to go to the store more than once a week.
2. Fresh food has an expiration date.
When I first got SNAP benefits they seemed excessive. $200 a month is a lot when compared to the $50 a month I was spending eating nothing but home-made pizza. However, with that money, I was finally able to get my calories from sources other than bags of flour. Fresh vegetables are nice -- indeed you'll have a hard time finding a source of potassium in your diet without them -- but they're luxuries in that they are very expensive in a cost/calorie sense, and quite often they'll go bad in the fridge before I have a chance to eat them. Wal-mart just doesn't stock the freshest produce every day (though you get reasonable stuff on good days, but that requires you go there every day to be there when they first put it out) and so sometimes you come home with tomatoes that only have one or two days left before they're rotten. Indeed, I've never managed to buy jalapenos that have lasted a week.
They've recently reduced the benefit to $182, at least in my state. Thankfully it still covers what I spend -- I have an extra $200 on my SNAP card saved up -- but seemingly exactly so, as I've had it for 11 months and (200 * 11 - 200) / 11 = 181.8. I hate to imagine what that will do to people who don't have the luxury of borrowing their mother's car and instead have to buy from the local convenience store. (I live 5 miles from the store, and the closest bus stop is actually at that store, and I can't move because I have to live in a place I can afford in SSD, so I'd be rather fucked without my mother's assistance.) Indeed, there's no fresh food there at all, and so they'd likely be forced to live on chips and soda.
The US seems to be going the Zimbabwian way, where they had to decrease the font used on banknotes to fit all the zeros on it... Ask any Zimbabwian how well this has worked out.
It's gonna take both John McClane and Ben Gates to keep those Gruber boys from stealing a TRILLION DOLLAR COIN!!!
Once you start behaving rationally, then I'll treat you seriously.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I point you to an old Beatles song, "Taxman". The Beatles at the time were being taxed at 95% but never the less is is reputed that they made a stack of five pond noted a mile high in that same year. None of them are pleading poverty.
Previously discussed and found to be nonsense. In about 5 minutes. By a pack of nerds (I include myself.) On the internet.
And an elected congressman with a full-time research staff still hasn't figured it out. We're doomed.
Willing and able couriers needed to retrieve our balanced budget.
I see a great heist movie out of this. Perhaps reform the Ocean 11 team to steal the trillion dollar coin. I wonder how you spend it?
Folks, I have been saying it for a long time and I will say it again.
The economy is collapsing. There is nothing the federal reserve or President or Congress can do to stop it. The only thing they can do is to force it to collapse on their time table, so they can control the transfer of wealth to themselves.
Nobody claims there are any trillionair's, but since it would be stupid to ment just one coin, it is safe to say there will be millions of them. They serve one purpose and one purpose only, to provide a real value currency for a dollar that will be worth nothing.
These coins will be made in one form or another, and they will be provided as a currency, which will push the US dollar to a complete collapse, and it will happen exactly when they want it to.
Those of you who invested in Gold and Silver are going to be screwed, because the real value is in Platinum, and that is why there are so many advertisements in magazines, TV, Radio, and the Internet trying to get you to buy Gold and Silver. Gold will be normalized back to it's pre-inflation levels, and those that have Platinum will have a mountain of wealth.
Stock up on food. You need at least six months worth, for each family member.
Get ready to defend, because desperate people will come for what you have.
make plans, be a prepper.
If you see this and you finally get it, congrats. if you still think it will all be fine, then don't blame me, and don't come around me.
People often skip overtime work because the higher withholding and taxes reduce their incentive. And yes, I have met them.
I've got to disagree with you. When inflation creeps in be it more linear or exponential those with money move their money into commodities as they are a great hedge. Everyone in the world needs commodities, even more than they need cash laying around. Granted a true hyper inflation leading to currency collapse is bad for everyone whether you have money or not, but anything less than that, money will changed from currency, securities and so on to commodities.
The problem now is that we are using a monetary system that believes in inflation and gives power to a private bank that charges the government money in order to create money. This is a scam and will always hurt the middle class and retired as they are usually the "savers" in the country. The richer people are good at making money and in this inflationary system they make more and more, only to beat inflation.
And when the creditor doesn't accept your paper bills anymore because it is not backed by anything?
Captcha: wronging
Am I the only one reminded of the Triganic Pu?
I am not sure why a bill would be needed to prevent the president from coining money. Maybe our congressional leaders belong to a different country than I do, which has laws already in place which state Congress can only coin money. That money is Silver and Gold.
I do not see the mentioning of handing that responsibility off to a private foreign bank called the Federal Reserve, which is not a government entity.
From what I can see, the Republic and the Democratic ideals embodied in that republic are dead.
It is girating out of control at the hands of very evil people, who I would like to point out make up laws as they go along for their friends, and themselves for just about any purpose.
Any purpose that allows them to do whatever they please, and call it lawful.
But the idea that there is any "law of the land" anymore where justice reigns supreme and equal for all, has been replaced with chaos and ever growing amounts of destruction by the "laws of men".
Destruction to our cities which are rapidly disappearing. Destruction of our currency, which is on a cataclysmic decline and will more than likely break the USA into pieces. Destruction to foreign lands, where these criminal bankers are funding mischief by printing Federal Reserve notes because I can assure everyone here, no way could we have what, 12 last count foreign wars or interdictions going on from just tax revenue.
Finally which makes me very sad, is the destruction of our youth, who have no future as long as this continues. The destruction of the ideals of youth will bring civil war and decline to a country if no opportunity is afforded to them to make meaningful contributions to a society they believe they can participate in.
The currency is destroyed, and there is confusion in a land where the constitution of its founders has been tossed aside to plunder and destroy the lives of our young people under the disguise of "safety".
So sad.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
I wasn't. It was a clip from Fox posted on YouTube and publicized at Media Matters for America.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) clearly lacks an understanding of monetary policy if he thinks that the trillion dollar coin idea is anything other then a joke. Can he also propose a bill blocking the president from writing an executive order requiring all citizens report for immediate gender re-assignment surgery.
Really glad to see our representatives spending time on the things that really matter.
I was misinformed about which precious metals hand Congressionally-imposed limitations on their minting.
Substitute "platinum" for "bullion coins" in the first paragraph and "platinum" for "gold" and "bullion" in the second.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
How about bringing back the $500, $1000, $10,000, $50,000 and $100,000 bills. It's a real PIA to haul around 15K in $100 bills. Expose the stupidity that this somehow helps track the drug trade. Should raise other purchases to report to $100K. That way one could buy a small airplane or a descent car in cash again. Auctions would become a lot more manageable too.
Doesn't matter what anyone else says.. if his circle of advisors demands it, Obama will executive order his way through any pesky "checks and balances."
And let me add this... Why is it that investment income is capped at 15% for capital gains (now 20% as of 1/1 for people over $400,000) A rate that is much lower than taxes on the middle class who work. The people who are sitting on their asses pay less in taxes (as a percentage.) Hard work should be rewarded, not sitting on investments.
Probably because investing involves the risk of losing the entire sum put in. Employment income, on the other hand, is guaranteed to come as long as you are employed.
Also, "hard work" is rewarded from investments. Other than government programs that build stuff just so they pay people.
It's just aggravatiing the problem, not just for the US but also for the whole world. In the minting process, the US could very likely lose much goodwill and trust as a responsible member of the global community. Imagine, if you will, a million (or more) trillion-dollar coins sloshing around the financial system of the US and the whole world.