Here’s one way out of the debt-ceiling impasse, courtesy of well-known Yale constitutional-law professor Jack Balkin:
Sovereign governments such as the United States can print new money. However, there’s a statutory limit to the amount of paper currency that can be in circulation at any one time. Ironically, there’s no similar limit on the amount of coinage. A little-known statute gives the secretary of the Treasury the authority to issue platinum coins in any denomination. So some commentators have suggested that the Treasury create two $1 trillion coins, deposit them in its account in the Federal Reserve and write checks on the proceeds.
We don’t know, this proposal seems kind of … bizarre. Why mint two trillion-dollar coins when you can just mint a single two-trillion-dollar coin? Other than that, it’s perfect.
3 ways Obama could bypass Congress [CNN]
We don’t know, this proposal seems kind of … bizarre. Why mint two trillion-dollar coins when you can just mint a single two-trillion-dollar coin? Other than that, it’s perfect.