RUSH: Last Friday on Open Line Friday we had a call from a guy who wanted comment on the idea that had been put forth (you might remember this) that the government, someone would manufacture a platinum coin that would be said to be worth $1 trillion, and then the Federal Reserve would deposit that coin, and we’d have a trillion dollars. They just manufacture the coin. See, you can’t do that with other elements.
You can’t do it with gold or silver, because that’s already controlled. But there aren’t that many controls on platinum, apparently. So you could manufacture one coin, and the government could just say it’s worth a trillion dollars. You put that in the bank and then you draw down on it. If you’re the government, you start spending it. It’s a trillion-dollar coin.
So we had this guy calling talking about, “This is crazy. It makes no sense, it’s not founded in anything substantive, it’s not real. It might not even be legal.” Well, the idea is catching on. Paul Krugman of the New York Times loves the idea, which means that on every Democrat website and blog, millions of Americans are going to think that this is a good idea and worthwhile. This was a serious proposal. Paul Krugman, on the New York Times website, said that Obama should circumvent the debt ceiling by having the Treasury mint this trillion-dollar coin.
Just one.
If you could do two coins, it would be two trillion, and so on. And that coin would then be given to the Federal Reserve, and that would free up a trillion dollars of additional borrowing. It would not be used to pay down the debt. No, no, no! It would be used for additional spending. So Paul Krugman wrote, “Should President Obama be willing to print a $1 trillion platinum coin if Republicans try to force America into default?”
And Krugman said, “Yep, absolutely,” and people are serious about this. People on the left think that this is a brilliant idea, including Paul Krugman. So, because of this, the Republicans have introduced a bill that would ban the creation of a trillion-dollar platinum coin. Now, folks, you have to admit that this is the kind of stuff that banana republics do.
I mean, this is absurd. But it has the support of leading leftist Democrat journalists and economists, such as Paul Krugman. A $1 trillion coin! A platinum coin that’s worth probably 85¢ would just be said to be worth a trillion-dollars, and the government could spend it. It would be a trillion dollars we’d found, and we would have to print any additional money. It’s a miracle.
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