The entire premise of a Government Budget Constraint could vanish the instant the President chose to direct the Treasury Secretary to mint a $30 or even $60 trillion dollar coin, deposit it in the Treasury account at the Fed, and simply retire the "national debt".
Liberals now want Mr Obama to mint a $1 trillion platinum coin, providing all the spending room the government needs to finance the budget for the coming year.
So, hypothetically, Tim Geithner could mint a $2 trillion coin, deposit it in the Treasury's account at the Federal Reserve, and use that money in lieu of additional borrowing.
Tributes also appeared on Twitter, where Mr. Swartz had recently posted a note drawing attention to the campaign for the Treasury to mint a $1 trillion platinum coin to avoid a showdown over the debt ceiling.
I don't feel qualified to comment definitively on the technical legality or constitutionality of the widely-bruited proposal that President Obama should respond to House Republicans' debt ceiling brinksmanship by threatening to mint a $1 trillion platinum coin.
EARLIER this year the blogosphere was full of calls for America to pay its bills by minting a $1 trillion platinum coin.
Washington had been buzzing about the idea of minting a $1 trillion platinum coin in the event that Republicans block an increase in the debt limit (as they did in 2011), until the Treasury and the Federal Reserve rejected the idea.
Amazon is well known to bulldoze its way into new, sometimes perpendicular markets — like minting a $10 billion plus business in server farms and buying a video game live-streaming company — and now it looks like the company has set its eyes on meal-kit delivery.
But the law inadvertently gave the Treasury secretary the power to mint, say, a $1 trillion coin, or even a $5 trillion coin, or even a $1 quadrillion coin.
There are 75 mints in a $3 tin; 6 mints pack the same wallop 60 milligrams of caffeine as a cup of coffee.
