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The man who invented the trillion-dollar coin
By Alex Carp
New York Magazine
May 1, 2023
About a dozen years ago, a pseudonymous commenter on a financial website, writing under the name Beowulf, presented an unusual solution for a debt-ceiling standoff: If the federal government was at risk of default, and Congress couldn't agree to either cut spending or raise the borrowing limit cleanly, couldn't it simply mint a trillion-dollar coin?
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Beowulf had come across a 1997 law that, in response to requests from coin collectors, gave the Treasury the power to mint platinum coins of any denomination. (Collectors had complained that even coins available at the time with the smallest face values were still too expensive to afford.) The law started as a way to make collectible coins cheaper, but unlike every other law regulating new coins, this one did not establish a specific face value or limit the number of coins produced.
"Congress screwed up," Beowulf wrote. By passing the law, it had given the president the authority to direct the secretary of the Treasury to mint a coin of any value -- say, $1 trillion -- and deposit it in the Federal Reserve, which would be legally obligated to accept it. Ultimately, the coin's deposit would result in $1 trillion in government revenue or, with a coin of a different denomination, however much was needed to continue to pay its bills and avoid a default. "The catch is, it's gotta be made of platinum," Beowulf wrote. "Ditto the balls of any president who tried this."
In the time since, the idea has gained an unexpected acceptance among policymakers and economists. ...
... For the remainder of the report:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/05/the-man-who-invented-the-trillion-dollar-coin.html
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