The Trillion Dollar Coin: Joke or Game-changer?

Jay OwenReforming Global Finance

We agree with lawyer Ellen Brown, president of the Public Banking Institute, in this important article.  — Hazel Henderson, Editor

The Trillion Dollar Coin: Joke or Game-Changer?

By Ellen Brown, author, Web of Debt

The trillion dollar coin actually represents one of the most important principles of popular prosperity ever conceived: the creation of money by sovereign governments, debt-free. 

Last week on “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart characterized the proposal that the White House circumvent the debt ceiling by minting a trillion dollar coin as an attempt to “just make shit up.”

Economist and NY Times columnist Paul Krugman responded with a critical blog postaccusing Stuart of a “lack of professionalism” for not taking the trillion dollar coin seriously. However, Krugman himself had called the idea “silly.” He thought it was just less silly — and less dangerous — than playing with the debt ceiling, which was itself an unconstitutional shackle on the Treasury’s ability to pay debts already incurred by Congress.

Stewart responded on January 15 that he stood by his “ignorant conclusion that a trillion dollar coin minted to allow the president to circumvent the debt ceiling, however arbitrary that may be, is a stupid f*cking idea.”

 

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