FARK.com: (7473959) 1) Mint $2 trillion in platinum coins. 2) ???? 3) End the financial crisis

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		1) Mint $2 trillion in platinum coins. 2) ???? 3) End the financial crisis ( washingtonpost.com)		30
		More: Asinine, United States, Peterson Institute for International Economics, debt limit, debt crisis, gold reserves, Yale Law School, U.S. Mint

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15898 clicks; posted to Main » on 07 Dec 2012 at 12:38 PM (5 years ago) | Favorite | share:

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PirateKing

2012-12-07 12:40:56 PM

13 votes:

Now if Obama really wanted to troll, he'd super glue it to the Capitol steps.

sasbazooka

2012-12-07 12:13:25 PM

8 votes:

Ha! Imagine losing THAT in your couch.

Loucifer

2012-12-07 01:07:01 PM

5 votes:

Two platinum coins? That sounds like the change we need.

dennysgod

2012-12-07 01:06:06 PM

3 votes:

Coins? All we need is some new paper money:

nmemkha

2012-12-07 01:03:59 PM

3 votes:

Sim Tree

2012-12-07 12:49:12 PM

3 votes:

Tr0mBoNe: Arbitrary problems have arbitrary solutions.

In the past, the police had somehow gotten it into their heads that it was illegal to take photographs of anything, anywhere. Some said it was because of "copyright" some said it was because of "homeland security", but the result was the same: they'd make you delete the photographs.

One enterprising photographer came up with the idea of making a "photography license". It was similar to a library card, except that you added a photograph of your face in the top-left corner with glue or a laminator. When the cops stopped you for taking pictures, you could then respond, 'it's okay, I have a photography license', and show them it.

An imaginative solution to an imaginary problem.

tylerdurden217

2012-12-07 12:46:48 PM

3 votes:

Deposit 2 moon rocks into the Federal Reserve. They are considered a National Treasure and apparently priceless. That would make the debt ceiling unlimited. Problem solved, forever.

LS1Bird

2012-12-07 10:55:24 PM

2 votes:

I love the symbolism of this bill. Front: Worth as much as a pile of rocks. Back: U Wet? I'm horny.

nmemkha

2012-12-07 01:05:53 PM

2 votes:

toraque

2012-12-07 01:03:56 PM

2 votes:

The Stealth Hippopotamus: Lumpmoose: What's the actual physical process for moving the coins from the US Mint to the Federal Reserve? If they're stolen, does the US government just declare them worthless?

Once the coins are created I would think they would be worth whatever they are listed at. But good luck turning into a bank for 10s and 20s. If they could just change the value of current currency (say that 5 times fast!) they could just say that quarters were now worth 5 bucks and we would pump billions into the economy and not need to print or mint a thing.

I would think that thief would be the best solution. Someone would steal the coins and have to lock them away somewhere forever. There for you have the money in the system but locked down. This is the same thing we get with the dollar coin push every couple of years. So the value of the dollar would decrease to the point that we could pay off the debt with piles of useless green backs.

The day these get made you better switch your ARM to a fixed.

"I like it," said Joseph Gagnon of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. "There's nothing that's obviously economically problematic about it."

Has he not heard of inflation?!

Joseph Gagnon received a BA from Harvard University in 1981 and a PhD in economics from Stanford University in 1987.

I'd love to pick his brain on this topic.

It really is inflation, just Gagnon style.

Knight of the Woeful Countenance

2012-12-07 12:45:38 PM

2 votes:

Holocaust Agnostic: Lumpmoose: Maybe asinine. But an asinine problem requires an asinine solution. We have enough problems without adding arbitrary ones on top, like the invented debt ceiling and its subsequent biannual invented crisis.

Under this scenario, the U.S. Mint would make a pair of trillion-dollar platinum coins. The president orders the coins to be deposited at the Federal Reserve.

What's the actual physical process for moving the coins from the US Mint to the Federal Reserve? If they're stolen, does the US government just declare them worthless?

They wold be fairly easy to prove stolen I imagine.

Pawnshop probably couldn't make change.

Now, I want to help you out with this, but unfortunately, I just don't know enough about trillion dollar platinum coins to make a decision right now. Would you mind if I called a guy who's an expert in Numismatics?

Holocaust Agnostic

2012-12-07 12:40:32 PM

2 votes:

Lumpmoose: Maybe asinine. But an asinine problem requires an asinine solution. We have enough problems without adding arbitrary ones on top, like the invented debt ceiling and its subsequent biannual invented crisis.

Under this scenario, the U.S. Mint would make a pair of trillion-dollar platinum coins. The president orders the coins to be deposited at the Federal Reserve.

What's the actual physical process for moving the coins from the US Mint to the Federal Reserve? If they're stolen, does the US government just declare them worthless?

They wold be fairly easy to prove stolen I imagine.

Pawnshop probably couldn't make change.

RanDomino

2012-12-07 06:04:52 PM

1 vote:

Mr. Eugenides
The M3 money supply in the US is roughly 12 trillion. If the government were to create 2 trillion by fiat, a dollar would become worth about 12/14ths of a dollar or about $.86 overnight.

I don't think it's quite that straightforward, since this $2 Trillion would be effectively unspendable.

Maybe they'll put them in a museum, with a plaque that says "These small metal discs are the only thing holding up the economy".

Lawnchair
Except, you know, for this little 8000-mile-across ball they call the Earth. We actually haven't found 'more efficient' ways to grow crops.

well except for permaculture

MythDragon

2012-12-07 05:23:17 PM

1 vote:

Problem solved.

brantgoose

2012-12-07 03:24:57 PM

1 vote:

Here's a better plan.

Take $2 Trillion worth of platinum and make a lot of it into medical instruments and sell the rest to raise, say, $1.5 Trillion in cash. Train millions of doctors to perform cosmetic surgery. Send them all over the USA and the world to perform cosmetic surgery on the old, the ugly, and the victims of war and civil war, etc.--all expenses paid for by Obamacare and USAID.

People are paid more money when they are younger and better-looking, so all this cosmetic surgery will not only employ a few million people as doctors, nurses, make-up artists, temps, cleaning staff, cooks, etc., but will also give a massive boost to employment, wages and salaries, and pensions. It will also give a massive boost to everything from hospital building to food processing (hard to eat after cosmetic surgery--need a lot of soft, bland food).

Thanks to the free cosmetic surgery (and follow-up care) millions, maybe billions of people will be more attractive, which will give a boost to fashion, restaurants, hotels, prostitution, and thousands of other sectors of the economy. Also they will be more likely to spend on new houses (as they find more attractive spouses) and so forth.

I can not imagine a sector of the economy that would not be improved by massive cosmetic surgery on the fuglies. I could use a bit of work myself.

If you simply give people trillions of dollars in "money", whether it is fiat currency or precious metals, it will deflate the value of the precious metals and inflate the price of everything else by causing inflation. There is no difference between dumping a massive pile of gold into the economy and printing money. Only fools think there is.

Just look at what the treasure of the New World did to the economy of Portugal and Spain. The price of precious metals fell by about a third according to Adam Smith, the great Liberal Economist. The Spanish economy was ruined and rather than making Spain richer, it merely destroyed gold and silver mines in Europe, which couldn't compete on cost with slaves that were worked to death in the New World.

In short, this idea is one of the dumbest I've ever heard and any one of my jokes would do the economy more good if you printed them on toilet paper and handed it out for free on the street outside of high schools and grade schools.

tricycleracer

2012-12-07 02:21:50 PM

1 vote:

PsyLord: [www.history.com image 475x240]
You want $1 trillion for each coin? Well, the economy's not that great and I don't see a lot of people coming in to buy a $1 trillion coin. Tell you what, I can give you $10,000 for it and not a penny more.

I don't know much about trillion dollar platinum coins, so let me call my buddy who specializes in trillion dollar platinum coins.

Wade_Wilson

2012-12-07 01:59:44 PM

1 vote:

dennysgod: Coins? All we need is some new paper money:

[2.bp.blogspot.com image 410x224]

No, they need to be coins. Obama stands for change, you see.

In all seriousness, it's a stupid solution, but a stupid problem as well. Maybe this averages out to sane?

But I can't wait for the Lupin III special where he steals these, only to lose them when Zenigata accidentally picks them up, thinks they're quarters due to having minimal experience with American money, and then spends them on a cup of ramen.

Oznog

2012-12-07 01:40:43 PM

1 vote:

JackieRabbit: Huck And Molly Ziegler: I'm just happy to see the federal government could solve the problem along the lines of what I've recommended for a long time: Under cover of darkness, and without telling anyone, a crew fires up the machinery at one of our paper-money-making plants and churns out a trillion or so dollars.
Those dollars go into circulation, everybody has more money, they can pay more for stuff - and tax revenue goes up.
The important thing is, the gov't CAN'T TELL anyone they did this, because otherwise people would just run around whining about "inflation," "wheelbarrows" and "Germany."

You're welcome.

You've never studied macroeconomics have you? The government tried this stupid trick back in the lat 1970s and early 1980s in an attempt to end a recession. All it did was create double-digit inflation that took almost six years to get under control. The Fed must balance how much money is in circulation based on GDP to keep inflation in check.

Yeah, there's a law preventing this now, which is what keeps our credit rating high. But not for COINAGE, only banknotes.

So if you were to do this, you'd have to print millions and millions of DOLLAR COINS nobody wants. Maybe make a series for each and every US president...

crabsno termites

2012-12-07 01:14:07 PM

1 vote:

semiotix: . . .because it basically puts a giant clown nose on the entire United States government . . .

How do I know you've been out of town for a looooong time?

THX 1138

2012-12-07 01:10:56 PM

1 vote:

Oznog

2012-12-07 01:09:51 PM

1 vote:

OK but just don't hire a courier to carry it to the US Treasury on foot, through dangerous territory.

And yes, I volunteer for the job.

semiotix

2012-12-07 01:08:46 PM

1 vote:

Truther: Dems have done/said PLENTY of clown nose stuff over the years...

Oh, no doubt. But come on. The GOP sales pitch these days is basically "government is fundamentally a bad thing, at best a necessary evil, so put us in charge of it and we'll make sure it behaves itself."

Whether or not you agree with that, it's the reason Congress' approval rating hovers around 10%. 80% of the Democrats polled are furious that it never does anything, and 100% of the Republicans polled are furious that it might.

MindStalker

2012-12-07 01:05:15 PM

1 vote:

Knight of the Woeful Countenance: Holocaust Agnostic: Lumpmoose: Maybe asinine. But an asinine problem requires an asinine solution. We have enough problems without adding arbitrary ones on top, like the invented debt ceiling and its subsequent biannual invented crisis.

Under this scenario, the U.S. Mint would make a pair of trillion-dollar platinum coins. The president orders the coins to be deposited at the Federal Reserve.

What's the actual physical process for moving the coins from the US Mint to the Federal Reserve? If they're stolen, does the US government just declare them worthless?

They wold be fairly easy to prove stolen I imagine.

Pawnshop probably couldn't make change.

Now, I want to help you out with this, but unfortunately, I just don't know enough about trillion dollar platinum coins to make a decision right now. Would you mind if I called a guy who's an expert in Numismatics?

I'll offer you $25 for it, that's as high as I can go.

Grammatik Polizei

2012-12-07 12:59:50 PM

1 vote:

Minting your way out of trouble always ends well.

AgentBang

2012-12-07 12:57:47 PM

1 vote:

Simpsons did it.

Red_Fox

2012-12-07 12:56:23 PM

1 vote:

I'm the first? really?

/here trilli trilli trilli

keytronic

2012-12-07 12:50:31 PM

1 vote:

Of all the Simpson's episodes that accurately commented on or predicted the future of our society, never in my wildest dreams did I think the trillion dollar bill episode would be one of them.

Don't worry America, I'm sure having a government that continually confuses reality with parody will have no long term consequences.

shirtsbyeric

2012-12-07 12:49:05 PM

1 vote:

Make two extra coins and send them to China and call it even.

HMS_Blinkin

2012-12-07 12:46:15 PM

1 vote:

PirateKing: Now if Obama really wanted to troll, he'd super glue it to the Capitol steps.

I lol'd at that, thank you! I pictured all the derpy congresscritters trying desperately to pry the thing loose.

FatherChaos

2012-12-07 12:45:39 PM

1 vote:

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