latest entrant WTF national level division

[notorial dissent]

This is kind of the latest entrant in the WTF division. When I first heard this one I thought it was someone on some really serious whoopey juice, turns out there was, marginally, some reality behind it all.

It seems that a Democratic, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), posited that all the administration needed to do to resolve the debt issue was have the Treasury, through the mint, issue a one trillion dollar platinum coin and then deposit it with the FED to help reduce the debt.

Not to be out done, Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), has introduced a bill to prevent this, and just to add to the fun, someone put up a petition on the White House web site in favor of the coin.

I still can't decide if this is all just an elaborate leg pull or not, but I guess it leaves only one thong to be said,

Let the silly season commence, Congress is back in session, taxpayers beware!!!!!!!

[LaVidaRoja]

I suspect it was originally proposed as a sarcastic way of trying to show that the debt ceiling needs to be raised. The reaction is clearly from people who don't 'get' The Onion.

[notorial dissent]

The problem is that this is apparently coming from people in Congress, and that gets scary. Like I said, I don't know if this was an unintentional leg pull or just some not quite bright light in the house, what is scary is that they have seriously proposed other things just as far out.

[rogfulton]

I find it interesting that some of our local network affiliates have run an item or two on the proposed coin.

[Pottapaug1938]

A dose of reality, courtesy of NBC News:

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy ... -1B7889123

[notorial dissent]

In some ways a better article than the previous ones I have encountered, which did not rise to the level of high school journalism, in my opinion, but then this author is in his own way just as bad, clearly missing the salient point that the "coiners" are not talking about minting a coin worth a trillion dollars, which as he rightly points out would be impossible owing to a lack of the metal in question, but that they are instead talking about issuing a coin and denominating it at a trillion, the reverse of what we do now in that a bullion coin is issued at a legal tender amount, but worth considerably more. At least so it appears to my interpretation.

[notorial dissent]

Now, at least according to a Washington Post article, both the Treasury and the FED have rained down lots of cold water on the trillion dollar coin fantasy, apparently stating that neither believed the law allowed for that sort of action. One wonders just whose fantasy bubble they burst.

At any rate, the trillion dollar coin now seems moot for the moment.

[Burnaby49]

And the trillion dollar coin saves the Union! With change left over for wings at Hooters;

http://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2013/01/11