Yellen: Urgent action needed on debt limit, rejects $1T coin

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Tuesday that Oct. 18 remains the date she is likely to run out of resources to stave off an unprecedented default on the nation's debt without congressional action to raise the debt limit. She rejected the idea of minting a $1 trillion coin to avoid a default.

Appearing on CNBC Yellen said that if a default were to occur “I fully expect it would cause a recession as well” along with preventing the government from paying benefits to 50 million Social Security recipients and meeting the government's other bills.

She said it would be “catastrophic” if the government did not have the resources to pay its bills.

Yellen flatly rejected a novel idea that has been put forward to mint a $1 trillion coin and use that to avoid a default on the debt.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/yellen-urgent-action-needed-on-debt-limit-rejects-dollar1t-coin/ar-AAP9Ixs

[lagomorph777]

1. How about a trillion one-dollar coins?

Actually, I think that's how many are already sitting around in mason jars, useless.

[brooklynite]

2. WHAT! You mean she not going to go with a "simple" strategy from the blogosphere?

It’s almost like problem solving can be complicated.

[TheRealNorth]

3. I thought the idea was originally floated by Obama on 2011

[brooklynite]

4. Nope...

“The idea for the Treasury Department to mint a coin and send it to the Federal Reserve to pay off the debt was first popularized by Populist Party presidential candidate Bo Gritz in 1992. As a standard part of his stump speeches, he would hold up a five-inch example coin. The specific concept was first introduced by Carlos Mucha, a lawyer who commented under the name "beowulf" on various blogs. "Beowulf" outlined the idea in a series of comments on Warren Mosler's blog in May 2010, noting that "Congress has already delegated to Tsy [Treasury] all the seigniorage power authority it needs to mint a $1 trillion coin". Beowulf also drew attention to the concept on the blog of economist Brad Delong in July 2010 and in a legal analysis blogpost of his own in January 2011,[20] but it was not until July 2011 that the use of the concept as an unorthodox method of resolving the debt-ceiling crisis came to the attention of the financial press and in mainstream media blogs. At that time, the idea found some support from legal academics such as Yale Law School's Jack Balkin. Once the debt ceiling crisis of the summer of 2011 was resolved, attention to the concept faded.” — Wikipedia