US Gov may mint a 1 Trillion dollar coin out of thin air - Hiperinflation?

[CurbsideProphet]

This has been thrown around for a while now.  Basically it's just a way to circumvent the stupid debt ceiling, which is irrelevant since the US has raised the debt ceiling something like 76 times already and will do so again.  This is not hyperinflation, maybe if they were printing thousands of these coins like Zimbabwe but they're not.

[theymos]

I'd like to see them do that. The dollar would certainly collapse. It won't happen, though. The debt ceiling will be raised.

[kjj]

If the trillion dollar coin had come out as a surprise, it might have caused a bit of a panic.  Not that I think it even remotely likely to happen, but you know, if.

On the other hand, now that the story has made the rounds, everyone knows that raising the debt limit and striking the coin are effectively the same thing.  At worst, we'd all give a chuckle at them replacing one silly gimmick with another while the blogs that have been predicting armageddon since 1972 will continue to do so either way.

The truth is that these guys aren't idiots.  They know exactly what they are doing.  There was a crash coming, and they are trying to make it as soft of a crash as possible.  And the rest of the world is helping.  There is no panic dollar dumping, as bad as it is, because everything that you could dump your dollars for is worse.

[nobbynobbynoob]

The truth is that these guys aren't idiots.  They know exactly what they are doing.  There was a crash coming, and they are trying to make it as soft of a crash as possible.  And the rest of the world is helping.  There is no panic dollar dumping, as bad as it is, because everything that you could dump your dollars for is worse.

Gold? Silver? Other precious metals or resources? BTC?

[kjj]

The truth is that these guys aren't idiots.  They know exactly what they are doing.  There was a crash coming, and they are trying to make it as soft of a crash as possible.  And the rest of the world is helping.  There is no panic dollar dumping, as bad as it is, because everything that you could dump your dollars for is worse.

Gold? Silver? Other precious metals or resources? BTC?

(paper)Gold and (paper)Silver are even worse than dollars.  You want physical, but you want to pay paper prices for it, or your books won't come out right.  Good luck doing that in enough volume for people to notice.

[kibblesnbits]

In about 10 years, we'll all have those coins.  Three will probably get you a BigMac.  Remember, these were out not very long ago....

[nobbynobbynoob]

And that series of Zim$ (third Zimbabwean dollar, ZWR) was issued in denominations up to 100 trillion dollars! Where 1 ZWR = 1 septillion ZWD?

[FreeMoney]

That might actually solve everything, platinum out of thin air would be a neat trick.

But seriously this is nothing new whatsoever. They've been saying that a pile of paper/db entries is worth trillions of dollars for a very long time.

[21after2]

I think the $1 Trillion coin is more of a bargaining chip at this point. Or, perhaps more accurately, a threat. "Work with me or I swear to God I'll mint this coin!"

[hashman]

Um guys the fed has "printed" ~$2T out of thin air in the last five years (Fed's balance sheet increased from ~$800B to $2.9T).  If we include the Fed's off balance sheet (magical money they print out of nowhere and lend to foreign central banks so for some reason it doesn't count on the "official" books) it is closer to a ~$4T expansion.

The USD monetary base went from less than 1T$ to 3T$ or I misunderstood what you wrote? Why the prices didn't bumped 3 times?

Because inflation can take generations to trickle down. 

[Impaler]

No one seems to recall that LIBERTARIAN Bill Still has been recommending this same course of action for years (though with Trillions of regular coinage), and even says we should pay off the National Debt with it.  He points out that Lincoln did exactly the same thing to pay for the Civil War.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73vkHOPNZ8k&feature=channel_video_title

[hashman]

Imho this is a bluff to test the response. Everything so far has considered the effects of this within the US but it's biggest effect would be on the countries holding US debt, by doing this the US is effectively reducing that dollar valued debt by 10% and I don't expect they will be happy about that. I'd guess there are some heated discussions in diplomatic circles atm.

Could be a bluff you're right.  It could also represent a behind the scenes power battle. 

Remember creating money from nothing is not a new idea, indeed every dollar on the planet was created that way.  1T$ created from nothing is not in any way new.  The new thing here is that members of the United States corporation are trying to have the power to issue this new money through some kind of "commemorative coin" loophole.  For the last 100 years it appears that this power has been closely guarded by a private group of banks commonly referred to the as "The Fed", whatever the fuck that means.  They don't need to make commemorative coinage to issue this money but simply add zeros to accounts on certain ledgers. 

If congress tries to go through with this, one would expect some heads to roll.  However we can be sure there is a lot more going on behind the scenes that we have no clue about, so discussion here is of little or no value if we don't know the players involved, their bullshit fraternities, or their psychotic incentives.

   

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Nothing new here, it's the same as the trillions that have been printed in the last 5 years.. QE stuff with a disguise.. They changed the "Pr" for a "M"  Printing / Minting

And about hyperinflation, since 2010 I'm sad for those pilling cash for their old days, if those old days are in 10 years or more, they will regret.  

This campbell soup can price chart shows only a part of the effect of printing x trillion more dollars in the last 5 years...

IMO, the inflation caused by the printing of so much cash has just start to kick in !  

Watch out for a can of soup priced at 2+$ within few/several years.. No 401k plan can beat this, if there still money in those 401k (I think they replaced the money by an IOU note few years ago).



https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=112269.0;all

A can of soup is already $2 in Australia.

[alan2here]

How is this soup scale going now it's 2013, can the new image include the missing decade data point as well.

[Lethn]

I think the $1 Trillion coin is more of a bargaining chip at this point. Or, perhaps more accurately, a threat. "Work with me or I swear to God I'll mint this coin!"

I think it's more desperation, they're basically running out of ideas, I'm looking forward to this year for sure, there will be only one thing they can do soon enough.

[cbeast]

I think the $1 Trillion coin is more of a bargaining chip at this point. Or, perhaps more accurately, a threat. "Work with me or I swear to God I'll mint this coin!"

I think it's more desperation, they're basically running out of ideas, I'm looking forward to this year for sure, there will be only one thing they can do soon enough.

I think the coin is more of an intervention in a suicide attempt by a Congress with a 9% approval rating. I say let them jump.

[kgo]

No one seems to recall that LIBERTARIAN Bill Still has been recommending this same course of action for years (though with Trillions of regular coinage), and even says we should pay off the National Debt with it.  He points out that Lincoln did exactly the same thing to pay for the Civil War.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73vkHOPNZ8k&feature=channel_video_title

Bill Still is fine with fiat currency, but wants it to be controlled by the government instead of private banks, and wants to get rid of fractional reserve lending.  He thinks that the ability of the banks to expand then contract the money supply at will causes economic problems. He wants to start off with a fixed amount of money, and then have the supply grow annually with a predictable rate determined by the population growth.

He does not want to randomly print money so the government can spend whatever it wants.

[constitution]

I dont think they would ever do this, but if they do it will be great for BITCOIN!

[cbeast]

I think the $1 Trillion coin is more of a bargaining chip at this point. Or, perhaps more accurately, a threat. "Work with me or I swear to God I'll mint this coin!"

I think it's more desperation, they're basically running out of ideas, I'm looking forward to this year for sure, there will be only one thing they can do soon enough.

I think the coin is more of an intervention in a suicide attempt by a Congress with a 9% approval rating. I say let them jump.

Huh? I thought the coin is a suicide threat. Kind of like:

I think the $1 Trillion coin is more of a bargaining chip at this point. Or, perhaps more accurately, a threat. "Work with me or I swear to God I'll mint this coin!"

Or: "Hey Russians/Germans/whoever, you know how we owe you a ton of goods and services for those paper dollars you've saved over the years? Well if you don't do what we tell you to do, we'll commit economic suicide by triggering domestic hyperinflation, and then we won't owe you anything because your dollars will be worthless bahahahahaha!"

Institutional psychosis.

Kinda like "Hey World, the Euro means a bunch of smaller countries can play the same currency manipulation games as the big countries." In fact, all central bank backed currencies play these games without frontiers.

[dree12]

The coin isn't going to increase the money supply though, as it will never get spent. It's like writing yourself a slip saying "This slip is worth $1000000000000" so you remain solvent. I don't see how inflation can result from this. If anything, it will decrease inflation in the long run as the Fed's powers dwindle.