CC1: Trillion-Dollar Coin

Matthew Larotonda, a writer for Yahoo! News, states in his article, "Trillion-Dollar Coin? WH Says No Way," that the White House has shot down the idea of minting a trillion-dollar coin to attempt to solve the National Debt problem.

In the article, Matthew Larotonda states, "The Obama administration has killed any notion of minting trillion-dollar platinum coins to solve the nation's debt ceiling woes." Obama does not want to try to use underhanded and potentially dangerous means to solve the National Debt Crisis. He wants to solve the problem by actually fixing it rather than by making it worse in the long run.

Also stated by Larotonda in the article, "In a written statement released Saturday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney says there are only "two options" to deal with the looming need for the U.S. government to pay creditors for federal funding it has already spent." The White House knows that the idea of using the coin to pay off the debt is ridiculous. They know that, in order for the debt to be paid off, the budget must be balanced, otherwise, the problem will return.

 Larotonda also states in the article, "While there are laws in place to regulate how much paper, gold, silver or copper currency can be circulated by the government, there is nothing so clearly stated when it comes to platinum." Obama knows that circumventing our own laws would look very bad on our part. This would be damaging to the reputation of the U.S. in the rest of the world and would set a very bad example for other governments follow.

This reminds me of kids in school cheating to get better grades. Rather than doing the right thing and working to do better and fix a problem that they caused themselves, they choose to use underhanded tactics to make their grade better.

The idea of disregarding our own laws and regulations and paying off our debt in such a silly way is a bit of a joke. Even if it wouldn't cause serious inflation and damage to the economy, doing so would be hypocritical of the U.S. government, since they have rules and regulations against it.