The true, Terry Pratchett-esque origins of the trillion-dollar coin

It’s a feature, not a bug.

The debt ceiling debate is genuinely absurd: Congress authorized the spending of new dollars, so the Treasury has to create them. For Congress to turn around and force the Treasury not to create the dollars it ordered the Treasury to create is an obvious political gimmick.

Hence the trillion dollar coin — a proposal to use a 2000 amendment to 31USC§5112k (“Denominations, specifications, and design of coins”) that permits the Treasury Secretary to “mint and issue platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coin [at] the Secretary’s discretion.”

The big idea behind “mint the coin” is that this allows the Treasury Secretary to bypass Congress’s terrifying, high-stakes debt ceiling kabuki and just strike a coin that says “$1T” and helicopter it over to the Federal Reserve, where it will be deposited in Congress’s account.

Then, once Congress does the inevitable and authorizes the Treasury to make money the usual way (by typing zeroes into a spreadsheet), the coin can be melted down, or put up for display at the Smithsonian, or whatever. It’s not merely a gimmick — it’s an anti-gimmick gimmick.

The proposal originated with Rohan Grey, a law professor and MMT proponent, during the first of…