So it’s official – neither the Mint nor the Treasury will do the Platinum Coin Option:

The U.S. Treasury Department will not mint a high-value platinum coin to avert the debt ceiling, according to an official statement from the Obama administration obtained by the Huffington Post on Saturday.

“Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit,” the statement reads.

Well, that settles that. Since using the 14th Amendment gambit was rejected by the White House back in December, this leaves no “easy out” from the debt limit standoff.

I suspect that it was discovered that Billmon et al were right about the political optics of this: The platinum coin is something the GOP can use to mock Obama and the Dems and to perhaps fire up the base for a replay of 2010 next year. In fact, they were already doing so. Removing the Platinum Coin from the picture deprives the GOP of their efforts to repaint the picture from the hostage-taking scenario that will cause the Republicans to lose big in 2014 should they actually pull the trigger.

The Republicans know this and are frantically trying to argue around this by pretending that they really aren’t holding anything hostage. But as David Weigel points out, this isn’t working:

After all, if you nab some 12-year old scion of a millionaire, and threaten to do something bad to them unless you get $1 million, you’re taking a hostage. The fact that the 12-year old will eventually age and die of natural causes doesn’t mean you’re not forcing somebody’s hand. But Republicans realize that they’re blamed when they demand these cuts, so they’re trying to shift the Overton Window and claim that whiny Democrats are just pitching a fit. The reframing is not working so far.

Let’s just hope now that the political wonks are right and the Republicans can be made by their Wall Street patrons to back off. Otherwise, we’re doomed.

In the midst of the increasingly heated discussion over the Platinum Coin Option, a big fat data point has appeared favoring the option’s legality and feasibility — namely, at least one congressional Republican is desperate to ban it before Obama can use it:

Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) is introducing legislation that would ban President Barack Obama and the U.S. Treasury from minting platinum coins to avert the debt ceiling standoff.

Walden’s defense of his bill is somewhat bizarre: He claims that it’s a way to protect the debt ceiling and thus keep the government from avoiding paying down its debts, when in fact the existence of the debt ceiling means that the government would be forced not to pay its debts and obligations, and therefore is a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Even worse for Walden and his fellow Republicans, his legislation does something that the Republicans have taken great pains to avoid doing, which is to tacitly admit that the Platinum Coin Option is both legal and possible. Walden’s bill would make excellent court-of-law ammunition in defense of the legality of the Platinum Coin Option.

To paraphrase Paul Krugman: Release the Kraken Mint the Coin!

Is the much-touted “Fourteenth Amendment option” a viable end run around the debt-ceiling nonsense that threatens to destroy the world?

Charles Grassley thinks so. Bruce Bartlett thinks so. Former president Bill Clinton definitely thinks so: He’s said he’d do it “without hesitation, and force the courts to stop me”.

As for whether the courts or anyone else would or could try to stop Obama should he invoke the Fourteenth, even Laurence Tribe, who is known to be close to the Obama administration — close enough to carry its water, as he blatantly did with his pronouncement earlier this month that the Fourteenth Amendment didn’t trump the debt ceiling legislation — has admitted that this is highly unlikely: “This is not a circumstance in which the courts have any plausible point of entry.” Tribe even went so far as to dismiss the threat of impeachment as “not politically a very plausible scenario.”

So, knowing all of this, and with so much on the line — why, then, won’t President Obama admit that this is an option? Why, instead, is he pushing to put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block — and getting various liberal “Veal Pen” groups to echo his call for cutting Social Security?

Could it be it’s because he’s been planning to attack Social Security and Medicare — and whatever else is left of the New Deal and the Great Society — all along?

It sure looks like it. As Glenn Greenwald says: Read the rest of this entry →