[Occupymendocino] Trillion Dollar Coin ?

[Richard Karch]

New Yorker
January 9, 2013
A PLATINUM COIN AS BIG AS THE RITZ
Posted by Amy Davidson

The story goes like this: Sometime around the end of February, the Treasury will have spent all the money it has, and it will hit the statutory limit on the amount that the federal government can borrow—the debt ceiling. The fiscal-cliff negotiations, which were the product of the recent debt-ceiling fight, just made it worse by deferring another constructed crisis involving automatic cuts—sequestration—to about the same juncture. If Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling, the government won’t be able to pay its bills, including things like Social Security, soldiers’ pay, and interest on bonds, meaning that the United States of America would go into default and all manner of financial disasters would ensue. The Congressional Republicans, knowing this, plan to use the debt ceiling to force President Obama and the Democrats to agree to things like big cuts in Medicare. Since Obama doesn’t want his Presidency to coincide with a Depression, they think they have all the chips, apart from the one about the public hating them.

continues>>>>   http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/01/a-platinum-coin-as-big-as-the-ritz.html
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