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22 Sep, 4 tweets, 1 min read
I hope saying so doesn't make me a sophist. But while I agree that many arguments against Minting the Coin are bad, and that a case for the gambit's legality, I don't think it politic for government officials to exploit legal loopholes this way. 1/n
Indeed, I think it so impolitic that I'm pretty sure that Treasury and Fed officials would oppose the plan, as they did in 2013. In fact the White house has already opposed it: businessinsider.com/white-house-sa…
It's for this reason, and not because I share his belief that many (most?) opponents of the coin gambit are ill-informed or arguing in bad faith, that I share Joe's opinion that the whole debate is a waste of time.
This doesn't mean that I see merit in debt ceilings. On the contrary: I consider them a still greater waste, from temporary gov't closures and from effort spent on the great dog-and-pony show that ultimately culminates, every time, in the ceilings' being lifted.

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More from @GeorgeSelgin

George Selgin Profile picture
22 Sep
As @pkwsj reports, @GaryGensler continues to grotesquely mischaracterize antebellum U.S. banking: wsj.com/articles/secs-…
Although the Federal gov't didn't regulate banks then, state authorities certainly did: there was in fact no such animal as an "unregulated" antebellum state bank.
Banks established under so-called "free banking" laws were no exception: despite the name, such law always involved some very substantial regulations--many of which were detrimental to bank safety and soundness.
Read 15 tweets
George Selgin Profile picture
21 Sep
There's are many question-begging claims in this Time magazine article on CBDC by @DionRabouin, starting with its title's sensational suggestion that the digital yuan poses a threat to the U.S. dollar's global status: time.com/6084146/china-…
An earlier version's headline was even more over the top: "The U.S. Is Losing the Global Race to Decide the Future of Money--and It Could Doom the Almighty Dollar." What poppycock!
The digital RMB is a retail payments innovation--essentially, a substitute for ordinary retail bank deposits, paper notes, and coin. It's launch has ZERO bearing on the RMB's (or yuan's) attractiveness as either a reserve or an int'l invoicing currency. That's Z-E-R-O.
Read 19 tweets
George Selgin Profile picture
16 Sep
Though it makes some valid points, this Bitcoin-boosting video is marred with non-sequiturs and question-begging claims.
The non-sequiturs:
(1) Advanced societies use a lot of energy;
(2) therefore the more energy a technology employs, the greater its contribution to progress;
(3) Bitcoin uses a lot of energy;
(4) Ergo, Bitcoin makes us all better off.
The principal fallacy here is a version of the labor theory of value. It's true that the energy required to produce commodity monies, including "synthetic" ones like Bitcoin, makes them inherently scarce and as such unlikely to be supplied in inflationary quantities.
Read 13 tweets
George Selgin Profile picture
4 Sep
Shame on @zeithistoriker for distorting Mises's writings to suggest that his writings sowed the seeds of Hans-Hermann Hoppe's racist beliefs, and on @ContEuroHistory for publishing the resulting hatchet jobs. And thanks to @PhilWMagness for exposing their wrongdoings.
Of course it's true that Hoppe is a fan of Mises. But it hardly follows that Hoppe's racist views have their roots in Mises's writings. Prof. Slobodian apparently saw an opportunity to make Mises a victim of guilt by association...
and to make liberalism, of which Mises was a famous exponent, and which is evidently Slobodian's real bête noire, guilty in turn by its association with Mises.
Read 7 tweets
George Selgin Profile picture
3 Sep
.@rohangrey's suggestion that the Fed's unwillingness to grant a master account to TNB ("The Narrow Bank") means that it is just as unlikely to grant such accounts to Avanti and other fintechs seems mistaken to me. blockworks.co/legal-expert-a…
The Fed has reasons for refusing Master Accounts to TNB and other "Pass Through Investment Entities" (PTIEs) that don't apply to other fintechs seeking such accounts. In particular, it wishes to preserve the differential rates it offers to banks and MMFs and other counterparties.
The sole raison d'etre of PTIEs like TNB is to eliminate that differential--the IOR-ON-RRP spread--by allowing non-bank ON-RRP counterparties to earn the IOR rate. (For this reason, allowing them master accounts that pay only the ON-RRP rate or less would be = no accounts.)
Read 17 tweets
George Selgin Profile picture
3 Sep
Apologists for the forced currency component (Article 7) of El Salvador's Bitcoin Law like to note that Article 12 of the same exempts "Those who, by evident and notorious fact, do not have access to the technologies that allow them to carry out transactions in bitcoin."
That clause, however, continues with "The State will promote the necessary training and mechanisms so that the population can access bitcoin transactions." The government's @chivowallet is the main such "mechanism." cryptoticker.io/en/know-bitcoi…
Those who download the wallet will earn $30 worth of BTC, which they can spend, but not cash. The two catches are, first, that the Chivo Wallet isn't decentralized; as one blogger has put it, Salvadorans can "Say good bye to privacy with Chivo app." read.cash/@francis105d1/…
Read 6 tweets

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