Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #MintTheCoin

Most recents (24)

Is it legal for Congress to #default on the US #NationalDebt? It depends on who you ask. There are a ton of good legal arguments for and against, so perhaps it comes down to what the (degraded, corrupt, illegitimate, partisan) #SupremeCourt says?

nytimes.com/2023/05/04/opi…

1/ A kitchen sink. The Supreme...
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2023/05/26/min…

2/
In those terms, it seems like the game is over. #Biden should just surrender, hand the most extreme wing of the (degraded, corrupt, illegitimate, authoritarian) #GOP everything, even if doing so will push Biden's approval rating lower, dangerously close to the next election.

3/
Read 33 tweets
Here's how to #mintthecoin

1) Biden announces a new "emergency budget stability and national security seigniorage fund" at Tsy, and declares that every day between now and June 1 Yellen will deposit another $10bn platinum coin into the fund until R's pass clean ceiling increase
2) Then, on June 1, Biden/Yellen will begin depositing $100bn coins in the fund.

Crucially tho, Biden announces he has no intention of using the fund if the debt ceiling is increased cleanly - if that happens, he will instead recall the coins and shut down the fund
3) If Rs refuse to vote for a clean debt increase, and we hit x-date, then Biden will stop minting more coins, and direct Sec Yellen to use the fund to cover daily spending until the previously accumulated balance is run down completely to zero or R's vote for a clean increase
Read 5 tweets
One of the most frustrating things about the debt ceiling/mainstream #MintTheCoin discourse is the complete erasure of non-tax, non-debt-issuance mechanisms for refilling the TGA that exist and occur *today*.
The Mint returns hundreds of millions in seigniorage annually. The Fed returns tens of billions.

These are not "taxes or borrowing" yet the media acts as if the platinum coin would be the first time any revenue has ever entered the TGA outside of bond sales/taxes
To take just one example in a sea of examples, this article by @imillhiser from 'explainer' Vox actively miseducates people as to how the government budget works.

vox.com/politics/2023/… Image
Read 8 tweets
Almost that time again....

nytimes.com/2022/12/09/us/…
I respect @jeannasmialek's reporting but this is just incorrect.

"Failure to raise the statutory cap on the nation’s borrowing power...would lead to a first-ever default, creating financial chaos in the United States and the global economy"
It's possible that a default would occur in that situation, but it would be b/c Tsy Secretary Yellen refused to use other options available at that moment to prevent default. Whether she has the legal authority to refuse in that moment is...questionable

rohangrey.net/files/coinage.…
Read 9 tweets
The monetary endgame is really coming into focus for me.

TLDR: they will blow out the currency because they have to, there’s no other way out

Conventional wisdom says that being a member a large cohort is disadvantageous, because members must compete with each other for jobs.👇
The reality is, when money is political, a large cohort is a 900-pound-gorilla in the voting booth, and that’s exactly what the boomers were. This generation, at each turning, was able to prevail in pushing through policies that advantages them above all others.
Look no further than the last 4 presidents being boomers, and when they wanted someone to clean up the boomer mess, they elected a member silent generation 🤦‍♂️.
Read 27 tweets
I enjoyed the opportunity to chat with @StephanieKelton about this Jon Stewart-Tom Hoenig exchange, which is very illuminating.

stephaniekelton.substack.com/p/jon-stewart-…

But equally cool was seeing Jon Stewart do a 180 on his previous skepticism of #MintTheCoin.
Back in ~'13, Stewart was very dismissive of the trillion dollar coin, as seen in this back-and-forth w Paul Krugman.

businessinsider.com/jon-stewart-vs…

I'm not a fan of Krugman nor do I have much intrinsic respect for the economics "Nobel Prize", but it was notable in these interactions
just how willing Stewart, who often hid(hides) his politics behind the shield of "i'm just a comedian", was to straight-up dismiss Krugman's arguments, not because he had any substantive response to them, but simply because they stretched credulity beyond what he could grasp.
Read 8 tweets
New @Superstruc episode just dropped!

✨We Have Never Been Neoliberal, What Now?✨

Please listen & share.

(Description in thread below.)

moneyontheleft.org/2021/10/20/28-…
In this episode, co-hosts @orangeasm & @MaxSeijo argue that the pandemic not only killed neoliberalism as a tacit ideological formation; it also revealed how neoliberal truisms have never captured the actual causal mechanisms and potentials that defined the past 50 years. 2/7
Fleshing out these claims, Naty and Maxx journey through the work of rockstar economic historian @adam_tooze, focusing in particular on his widely-hailed recent book, Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World’s Economy (2021). 3/7
Read 7 tweets
The #DebtCeiling 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.

1/ "A $1 trillion coin; it is especially thick and is stam
If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2021/10/19/moi…

2/
Hence the #TrillionDollarCoin - 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."

3/
Read 31 tweets
1. Is financial market pricing in some heightened Taiwan Strait war risk this week? Yes, a little. No perfect measure. With China on holiday last wk, can attribute some pop of 5-yr CDS price as caused by heighted attention, which happens around Oct with back to back national days
2. To put in context, China 5 Yr CDS value is 48.87, reveals a 0.81% implied probability of default, on a 40% recovery rate supposed. US 5 Yr CDS is 17.4, reveals a 0.29% implied probability of default. Recent increase in US mostly by the debt ceiling fight. #MintTheCoin hahaha
3. @PredictIt betting market doesn't have a Taiwan specific market, but has 3 China related contracts. Betting on who would be confirmed for next US Ambassador to China, and Pres. Xi's chance of staying as party General Secretary for next 10 years.
Read 11 tweets
THE #MINTTHECOIN EPISODE

On the new Odd Lots, @tracyalloway and I speak with @rohangrey, who wrote the definitive legal case for for the legality of the trillion dollar coin.

Astonishingly compelling. Send this to anyone who still isn't coinpilled. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
@tracyalloway @rohangrey You can read Rohan's full paper here. rohangrey.net/files/coinage.…
And of course, the episode is free on all the apps, including

Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thi…

Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/5iVgfv…

Etc.
Read 4 tweets
Who said it?

"Even the advocates of a strict literal construction of the phrase, 'to coin money & regulate the value thereof,' while insisting that it defines the material to be coined as metal, are compelled to concede to Congress large discretion in all other particulars.
The Constitution does not ordain what metals may be coined, or prescribe that the legal value of the metals, when coined, shall correspond at all with their intrinsic value in the market.

... More than once in our history has the regulation been changed without any denial of
the power of Congress to change it, and it seems to have been left to Congress to determine alike what metal shall be coined, its purity, and how far its statutory value, as money, shall correspond, from time to time, with the market value of the same metal as bullion."
Read 10 tweets
Currently there is a $300 million statutory "ceiling" on the law authorizing the Tsy to issue Greenbacks, ie paper currency not subject to the debt ceiling. If we removed the $300 million ceiling and say "as many notes as Tsy Sec deemed appropriate", it could print a quintillion.
Just like the Tsy Sec could issue a quintillion dollars worth of Treasury Securities if/when the debt ceiling was suspended, as it has been for most of the past 8 years in between brief reauthorization-and-resuspension periods. The coin is no different, Preston just hates fiat.
The ompt thing about coinage act is that it has never specified a quantitative limit on amount of coins, or their face value, that can be minted. There has never been a "ceiling" like w other instruments, only denominational limits which the platinum provision doesnt have at all
Read 5 tweets
Read 63 tweets
Flashback to four years ago via @JakeSherman

Congress then attached debt limit to the CR & hurricane $ & Dems voted for it. ***All 17 no votes in the Senate came from Rs.***

Ds want Rs to return the favor, but most are just saying no.
nytimes.com/2017/09/07/us/…
Democrats had the option to defuse debt limit all on their own, but decided to hand a detonator to the GOP. That risks a shutdown fight, rattled markets, and assorted messy scenarios. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
A decade ago, just getting close to a debt limit smashed consumer confidence, tanked stocks, etc. Folks who went through that experience before, like @danpfeiffer, had suggested Democrats raise limit on their own through 2024 so Biden doesn't face same scenario in his first term.
Read 13 tweets
A large collection of examples demonstrating the #MMT view of class conflict/class struggle, and where specifically MMT addresses it.

[THREAD v.1]

(With thanks to many.)👇
👆From a 2019 post by Australian economics professor Bill Mitchell (@billy_blog) (bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=42113)👇
👆A thread filled with examples of how MMT addresses class conflict/class struggle by @moneyontheleft’s Scott Ferguson.👇
Read 20 tweets
@jasonfurman Jason, this is wrong on several levels.

1) As @NathanTankus notes here (), the Fed is ultimately responsible for determining the distribution of long vs short-term govt liabilities in circulation, regardless of what Treasury issues in the first instance.
@jasonfurman @NathanTankus So financing deficits by issuing long-term bonds does not “lock in” low long-term rates for Tsy, since the Fed can and will always ‘sterilize’ that action by purchasing those bonds and replacing them with short-term reserves to meet its preferred maturity distribution curve,
@jasonfurman @NathanTankus which leaves us back in the exact same position from a consolidated govt perspective.

2) This also ignores the significant psychological and practical effects of transitioning from the current budget process to using overt monetary financing. Presently huge swaths of the public
Read 17 tweets
2/ A one-pager by economists L. Randall Wray and Yeva Nersisyan
levyinstitute.org/pubs/op_62.pdf
3/ Economist Pavlina Tcherneva (@ptcherneva)'s recommended response to the #coronavirus health crisis: project-syndicate.org/commentary/cor…
Read 14 tweets
***BREAKING***

I am thrilled to announce that the full legislative text of the #ABCAct bill to #MintTheCoin is now public:

tlaib.house.gov/sites/tlaib.ho…

More details are available in the press release here:

tlaib.house.gov/media/press-re…
I'll discuss details below, but 1st, a huge shout out to @RepRashida (@RashidaTlaib) & her brilliant staff for their vision, courage & leadership.

It's been thrilling to watch the bill take form, and I look forward to it being passed into law & providing urgent relief to all.
Special thanks to @PramilaJayapal, as well as @RepChuyGarcia, @RepHastingsFL, @EleanorNorton, @AOC, @IlhanMN, @AyannaPressley, @RepBobbyRush, @janschakowsky, & @NydiaVelazquez, for cosponsoring the bill.

Solidarity between progressive leaders is a beautiful thing to see.
Read 22 tweets
@StephanieKelton - preach!
Never thought i'd see the day when Fed-Tsy remittance policy gets multiple paragraphs in the NYTimes...
Read 7 tweets
1. Here's @RashidaTlaib in July last year asking the Fed to commit to buying state/local government debt in a recession.

nymag.com/intelligencer/…
2. Here's the WSJ on the Fed's new state/muni debt buying facility today:

wsj.com/articles/fed-a…
3. Here's @RashidaTlaib on March 21 proposing that the Treasury sidestep the bond market and use Overt Monetary Financing to conduct fiscal policy:

Read 6 tweets
@TylerEvilsizer @AlexParkerDC @NeilShader @MarcGoldwein I sent this explanation directly to Alex earlier, but might as well post here as well.

1. The program is intended to be a money-financed fiscal program - a term others have used (ie the Waters house financial services committee bill), but in their approach, "money financed
@TylerEvilsizer @AlexParkerDC @NeilShader @MarcGoldwein fiscal" means the treasury issues treasury debt, and the fed buys it up. That is regular debt-financed fiscal+QE Whereas this approach uses the Treasury's own parallel money creation capacity, which it has retained since the birth of the republic, to finance its own fiscal
@TylerEvilsizer @AlexParkerDC @NeilShader @MarcGoldwein spending. Not "Fed-supported deficits" or "Fed providing the money" or "helicopter drops as a last resort of monetary policy." Fiscal money for fiscal policy. If there is any negative fallout from the program, it will be born squarely by Congress and the Fed.

2. Economically,
Read 25 tweets
"“Debt clocks” and bogus concerns about “borrowing from our grandchildren/China” fuel demands for needless tax increases and spending cuts, Grey says. Debt scolds may be willing to support limited fiscal measures now, but they could always block needed action in the future if the
government felt the need to issue bonds to pay its expenses. The trillion-dollar coin would get around this. Grey believes Tlaib’s relief program should be inoculated against those concerns by breaking the link between deficit spending and debt issuance. From this perspective,
the platinum coin should help prevent the premature withdrawal of needed support for the economy. Encouragingly, Grey has found that the simplicity of the proposal “seems to be having a radically empowering effect on average people to demand we do this.”

barrons.com/articles/can-t…
Read 4 tweets
@GowerInitiative @PhilArmstrong58 "For 3 years, the economy expanded until the US central bank intervened in 1937, repeating its mistake of only a few years before to increase interest rates and trigger another recession."
Remember the Nazis were popular because they ditched austerity..
theguardian.com/business/2020/…
@GowerInitiative @PhilArmstrong58 💡👇🏻

Some reality at last.. "Tlaib proposes to pay for the cost of the program by calling on the Treasury to use its authority under federal law to issue two trillion dollar platinum coins. The move would not add to the debt." Indeed it would not..
commondreams.org/news/2020/03/2…
Read 87 tweets

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