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Much has, and is, been/being written about this platinum coin concept.
At FDL, at least, or MYFDL.
I’ve been critical of it cuz, mostly, it’s a phookin fantasy.
There’s just no WAY this President, or Congress, will endorse or enable it in any manner or form.
But many continue to write about it, it’s gotten some publicity in the msm somehow thru Krugman, but it’s not real, it’s not possible and it’s a fantasy not worth the time exploring cuz like a Constitutional Convention, it’s just not phookin gonna happen, no matter HOW MUCH you people write about it.
So, here’s what I thought (yes I know, HuffPo of all crap) was a decent refutation of it all, and the fantasy exposed for all it’s worth, platinum or not.
Can we stop this idiot’s fantasy of something that can never happen, but YOU people seem obsessed with, now? Please? Yer wasting good white space and fonts.
Harumph.
54 Comments
Larue. Anything that makes people think about the BS (banking system) is good. Any game that can be played will be played. You can bank on it.
If it bothers you, don’t read it and the pain will go away. Duh!
What I find supremely absurd (beyond the trillion-dollar magic coin thing, of course, which is absurd in its own right) is that people still think Obama doesn’t want to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and is doing everything in his power to avoid it. I honestly don’t understand how such credulity is still possible at this stage of the game.
Sure, but tell me, where do YOU stand on the fantasy at hand?
I sure as shat didn’t take the time to do this diary for people to tell me don’t read the crap.
*G*
You and I fully agree on that.
It just kills me, that people still think Obama and the Congress Dems are for us and not agin us.
That shit gets old, fast. It’s like red state crap.
N still, so called liberals and such are callin for support of Dims and Obama.
All while they are slittin our throats.
I know who the bad guys are. You’d phookin think with all the evidence at hand, most effin liberals would know, too.
But they don’t. Our own, are killin us.
Stupid liberals.
*G*
Larue, the debt ceiling battle is first and foremost a battle between the Executive Branch and the Congress. In that regard, Obama isn’t fighting for “the people” or “Democrats” or “progressive principles.” He’s fighting for his own executive power.
And that is something we can be assured he will fight for. See FISA, prosecution of leakers but not torturers, and the battles over warrantless wiretapping.
Whether he’ll use the Platinum coin as a weapon in that fight is another issue.
This explains at least some of it: How Liberals Shirk Responsibility for Atrocious Policies
Of course he won’t. 31USC5112(k) blows a gaping hole in his (and Pete Peterson’s) boogey-man story about debt and deficits by which they seek to bamboozle the American public into accepting austerity. The simple fact is that the government has no need for further borrowing.
How come this all feels like an episode from the radio program “Let’s Pretend”? All that’s needed now is the “Cream of Wheat” commercial to complete the picture.
Oh, wait. This isn’t pretending and there is no Cream of Wheat commercial.
Eat your porridge!
So so true. It’s the clique of intellectual mystique of being a college educated liberal and being above all the other riff-Raff. And most as professionals, bring in enough money that they could give a wet slap about the policies and their effects on others.
Sounds kind of republican to me.
Compradors in all colors.
The meritocracy paint job peels off. For most of these fuckers, in the backs of their minds, a voice is whispering, “those will die who’re less smart than I.” Fuck. Some of ‘em say it.
Bred monsters. Yes, comrade Larue, “All while they are slittin our throats.” And all the while meritocrat horde silently observes.
Larue, love ya man, always have, always will. And agree that it is indeed a huge fantasy to believe that there is more than a .00000000000000000000000001% chance Obama would ever even seriously CONSIDER actually doing this.
That said, I like the idea of the coin for other, far more important and long lasting reasons than the debt fight.
There is simply NO reason why we should continue to pay interest on the money we spend that is in excess of the money we take in with taxes. That is what is unsustainable.
And the coin, though likely never used, brings this fact into focus and discussion, which, IMO, is a good thing.
Heh; I just said something like that on cmaukonen’s thread: it’s a whole ‘nother way to look at money. The main gripe many folks here have is that it supports capitalism, but considering that socialism and socialistic enterprises are creeping into being out of necessity, and will inevitably come into fuller flower soon and may start tilting the balance in a mixed economy… okey dokey with me.
I dunno what people reckon for a post-capitalist society; I’m still learning and seeking good info.
Nice to see you, OFG, by the by.
And LaRue: what if you’re in the running to have your face on the coin?
Always the baby steps. No wonder we’re always way behind.
What we have today is a form of feudalism.
Profit seeking is part of human nature. It is not going away. Amongst those posting hear I don’t read of any alternative. Socialism and Communism have been tried.
Unlike most here I’ve lived in a Socialist country. It was not so pleasant.
This is the best pwoggies can do. We have an existential crisis of human nature. Popping off conservo-liberal maxims ain’t pwogress, it’s regress.
A Socialist country? You mean the one that started this crapitalist cluster fuck?
“I dunno what people reckon for a post-capitalist society; I’m still learning and seeking good info.”
You can start by looking into resource-based economies. The zeitgeist movement and venus project are a good start. There are people out there looking beyond the high priest(economist) for answers that gets us away from this capitalist pyramid scheme of currency and death.
In essence these movements want to use scientific reasoning and methods to address social concerns on a global scale.
One must convey a dash of skepticism when recommending Fresco’s alternative, comrade. Apparently he had followers and they abandoned him. I’d be interested to know the truth of that. Of, course, I cannot dismiss all of his ideas on that basis.
Sorry for the continuing ambiguity.
You are referring to the split between the zeitgeist and venus project. From what I can tell it had to do with differences in strategy but the aims are the same.
Good article! Thanks for the link. The junior high comparison is very apt, I believe.
No, I don’t believe I am. I believe The Venus Project (or whatever it was called back then) had it’s convulsions long before the Zeitgeist movement started.
What I like about Fresco is the scale of his ideas. Global sustainability is the only option in moving forward, if not, war will continue to define the human species.
Agree, except one must also consider that Mutually Assured Descent is necessary.
I know that Fresco has been promoting his ideas since the 60′s, but of the “followers” breaking off that you speak of, I am not sure about.
Do you mean the “Oh shit!” moment or tipping point where enough sheeple wake up before implementing any good idea? Then yes we may have to go deeper into the hole before we humans stop digging for magical coins.
Yglesias today argues that legally the President must mint the coin if Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling.
1. The President cannot unilaterally rescind spending that Congress has authorized (a Nixon-era court case limited Nixon’s dismantling of the Office of Economic Opportunity).
2. The President under the 14th Amendment must not allow the good faith and credit of the US be called into question.
3. The President must obey the debt limit.
4. The President might be able to unilaterally raise taxes, but politically that’s a one-way ticket out of town.
5. By a quirk of unforseen intersection of the contradictions in law, the President can order the Secretary of the Treasury to mint a platinum coin of any size, denomination, design,…
The direct economic consequences are nil unless the Fed starts buying back US debt. (The platinum coin would pay of it’s face amount of debt held in the Fed’s own account.) The indirect economic consequences are unknown. No one knows how the stock markets or bond markets would react. Would avoiding default make them move positively? Would the unorthodox use of a platinum coin spook them?
I don’t think it will come to that, now that these cards are being laid out on the table. But as said upthread, it will spark a discussion of how the heck money works.
So sit back politics fans and enjoy the show.
Hmm, no, that tipping point could go either way. I meant after the tipping point, when ex-compradors chose correctly.
It will not be the first extinction event on the planet but it will be the first man-made one. Consumerism has been programmed into us for a very long time and it will likely take generations before it is programmed out of us. Fewer humans around to buy the latest consumer trinket and the fact that you can’t eat or drink money will, while on a planet that barely supports human life, hopefully, will convince us not to make the same mistakes.
Do you really think they could give a shit about what metal the coin is made of? We’ve been doing this for 220 years with other metals. In 2011 we covered about $10 billion (i.e. 1%) of our deficit with such coins. The only difference this time is that we’ll be doing about 100 times as much money through coining and will be doing so at the Secretary’s discretion as explicitly authorized by Congress in 31USC5112(k).
I agree with Yglesias that 31USC5112(k), if it’s constitutional, kills the 14th Amendment argument. If Obama refuses to use 315112(k), he’s in the position of refusing to cover the deficit with anything but borrowed money, which would be hard to defend.
Why does “civilized society” have to do their killing first? HeyZeus ain’t comin’ to rescue ‘em after.
The winners see killin’ as progress and some of ‘em as Gawd’s annointing. Plenty of old bullshit around that shows the ole lesson-learning capability is a sham.
Stop the bullshit (not addressing you, comrade comments).
Giving a shit is not the question. Spooking the market is an old trusted way of extracting money from the market. Dunno how that changes with programmed trading software, but stories move markets and this is a possible story that could have an effect.
I think that in fact, they don’t give a shit about the metal and probably not the amount. And by having this long discussion, it’s not like it will be unanticipated except for the surprise that “NoDrama” did something this dramatic. The unorthodox isn’t the platinum; it’s the motive, occasion, and timing of striking the coin.
That is why I say “hopefully”. We did learn how to make fire and the wheel, how we decide to use our tools is where predicting human behavior becomes sketchy at best and those old paradigms of religion and economics may cause us to fall into the same hole again.
It is these old paradigms that retard human progress in this current age.
Can’t quite care for Fresco’s vision, but I do know a bit about Sacred Economics, which is close to what a lot of the global Indigenous imagine, though the details…who knows?
Yes, there are loads of people doing great things out and about, and looking at the Mondragon cooperatives and other models. What I meant was more on the order of tipping points to revolutionary new paradigms, as in: once 10% or so of a populace believes a new idea strongly, many former objections begin to fall away, and those new seeds are nourished by new understanding, new consciousness, then rebuilding a sustainable and just society with economic models that work for all of us, or at least…most of us who can learn that living more simply will be glorious.
Eisenstein and Fresco both agree the concept of money hinders human progress, so I really don’t see them that different from each other.
As for establishing new paradigms, the powerful do not relinquish power willfully, so they must be compelled by some outside force. This force could be an ecological catastrophe, nuclear wars for resources, or a giant solar flare that makes the planet uninhabitable, who knows?
Won’t argue about that, you betcher bottom dollar hoss.
SOME itches just have to be scratched. And I fully realize my right to do so.
At SOME point, I can’t let the pro coins folks continue unabated like they really HAVE something going on that’s, really doable.
May I suggest, you skip over my diaries and comments too, if it gets to ya that badly.
*G*
Put me in yer group on this one, Jon, it’s insane.
Nah, that’s just the popular well reasoned political discourse angle.
The debt ceiling is not an argument, it’s a means of creating tension and it’s INTENT is to bridge the gap between social services programs realities and those of the corporate fascist persuasion who would END those programs.
The rest is kabuki, and you’ve fallen for it, hoss.
I seem to recall how everyone in Washington seemed to think “Libby-Gate” was really silly too. Somehow, they were forced to pay attention, though, because a few DFH bloggers paid an intense amount of attention to it and put the mainstream media to shame with their “nothing to see here, folks” attitude. No one who followed the FDL coverage thought it was silly, because they knew important principles were at stake. I don’t remember too many comments to the effect of “why are we wasting so much time on this, since we all know Libby will never spend a day in jail. The bad guys always win so why try?”
There’s been a lot of bitching over the years on progressive blogs about how the right-wingers get their “memes” into the mainstream. We have here an example of how a few econ bloggers (mostly Joe Firestone) built a buzz around the coin by relentlessly pushing it over the course of the last year or more, yet some people here are treating it like the latest cartoon from Breitbart factory. It’s “out there” now, and all you want to do is knock it? Is it because it wasn’t invented here? Are we all so disillusioned that we can no longer see the point of trying anything?
Progressive ideas will never have a chance as long as the PTB can bamboozle the people about how money works in a modern economy. This is a real teaching moment and we should be making the most of it. Thank you Joe Firestone for still having the fighting spirit that FDL used to have.
Beauty, thanks and well done you and timesthree@7.
And thanks to all for stoppin by regardless of your POV . . . sorry I could not read and respond earlier today . . .
Now to finish the reads and replies . . . ;-)
See, sometimes, we agree.
Will miracles never cease.
*G*
I grudgingly admit that you and a few others who would argue that ANY discussion of the ‘coin’ and banking issues can be informative are right.
There, I said that.
But I’ll be damned if I’ll stay silent while the loons who are pro coin continue to do so, mostly to toot their own horns.
It’s like the whole mess with the NFA bunch a year ago . . . (PW is the exception, I heart PW, and I read her with caring and concern regardless of the issue and yes I know PW was not ever NFA or whatever their acronym was).
And again, it’s a fantasy . . . whether we should LET fantasies stir up interest and discussion is another whole subject for that matter.
*G*
*G*
If nominated I won’t run, if elected I won’t serve.
And my swelled head would NEVER fit on any coin anyways.
Love your thoughts about post capitalism, which is indeed failing and failing hard and fast in this nation . . . when the needs of the masses are not met, change is inevitable. What form that change takes is unpredictable.
*G*
See, comrade, toastin’ don’t stop Ludwig. You should be grateful.
Vague, in terms of socialistic living.
But yeah, no models of such have worked yet.
N capitalism is failing, too, due to a lack of participation and control on the part of the masses.
Unregulated capitalism is doomed to fail the masses and empower the few. I think that’s been proven here in USA, and elsewhere.
But the system is so fully owned and operated by corporate fascism there IS no means to change it from within.
Ergo, inevitability creeps up and in, and BOOM, change will come from without. What change, who knows, but this status quo is unsustainable.
I’m ready for the next round of changes, this one is lost and boring me as it kills us all.
May dawg bless them for doing so, but so far, the system neuters their widespread impact on the masses.
When this shit falls apart, those folks are gonna be VERY important to out survival as a species.
Bless each and every one of ‘em n thanks for mentioning them.
*G*
Point! Score! Win!
Mark another notch in the ‘those who think any dialogue is good’ category.
Hard to argue against any of that, hoss. Well scribed, sir!
*G*
You continue to be killin me, just killin me, hoss.
But SKOAL, SLAINTHE, brothuh, and a tip of the Merlot or Bushmills to ya.
*G*
Current headline at HuffPo:
Here and here are related articles by Josh Barro at Bloomberg.
Oops! Here And Here.
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/waste