As the nation braces for another round of debt ceiling negotiations, one of the proposed
Instead of “In God We Trust”, the Trillion Dollar Coin would have had the text “Property Of Chinese Government”. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
ideas for avoiding the debt ceiling debacle involves minting a trillion dollar platinum coin and depositing it with the United States Treasury. However, the White House has officially declared that the Trillion dollar coin solution is now off the table. Here are 10 reasons why Obama Administration decided not to mint the trillion dollar coin.
1) No matter how hard they tried, US Mint just could not fit all the zeros to depict 1 trillion on the single coin.
2) Barack Obama and Bill Clinton got into a heated argument about which of their faces should be on the coin. The argument degenerated into a fistfight, and after the fight was over, neither of their faces were fit to be on the coin.
3) The US Treasury refused to accept the trillion dollar coin, because their coin jar is already full.
4) According to Republicans, Obama’s decision to mint a trillion coin would have been unconstitutional. This is because according to Republicans, every Obama’s decision is unconstitutional.
5) The coin isn’t a fool-proof solution for the debt ceiling crisis. Heads it solves the crisis, tails it doesn’t.
6) The administration found itself in a classic Catch-22 situation: the country has to mint a platinum coin to avoid raising the debt ceiling, but the country has to raise the debt ceiling in order to buy the platinum and mint the coin.
7) A trillion dollar coin would have been change no one could believe in.
8) The administration understood that minting a trillion dollar coin is just a gimmick rather than a real solution, so they would mint two 500 billion dollar coins instead.
9) Not every gas station in Washington would have change for that.
10) The economists have calculated that the impact of default on the sovereign debt would be preferable to the risk of accidentally losing the trillion dollar coin while buying something from a vending machine.
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Also fear that Montgomery Burns would steal it (after all, he stole a $1 trillion bill in a Simpsons episode).
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Oh yeah, I completely forgot about Mr. Burns. But I would guess that AIG and Goldman Sachs would beat Mr. Burns to the coin in the real life.
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excellent list!
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Thank you!
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#5 and #7 are priceless!
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Thank you!
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Also, there was a debate over whose fault it was that the debt got so bad. But don’t worry Obama claims he is “in a cent” 🙂
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Our debt is just like a coin, one side is Democratic and another Republican. So which party to blame for it depends entirely on your perspective.
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The idea follows that should Congress fail to extend the debt limit, Treasury could begin minting trillion dollar coins (in a process explained mostly seriously by Jim Pethokoukis on his American Enterprise Institute blog ), a number of which could then be put toward fulfilling debt obligations in the event new legislation stalls in Congress. The Federal Reserve would hold the hefty currency until it was time to pay the bills.
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