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Rohan Grey Profile picture
@rohangrey
May 12 • 8 tweets • 3 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
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
Putting aside the platinum coin for a minute, the Mint last year returned half a billion dollars in seigniorage revenue to the TGA - no 'borrowing', no budget approval, nothing.

How does this fit into the narrative above?

usmint.gov/wordpress/wp-c… Image
Even more significantly, the Fed remitted $76 billion to the Treasury in 2022, down from $107.9 billion in 2021.

These are serious, non-trivial sums sums - again, nothing to do with Congress, or 'taxes' or 'borrowing'.

Pure seigniorage.

federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pre… ImageImage
A small child asking their parent "but cant we just make money?" is closer to accurately explaining how the US govt budget works than these kinds of mischaracterizations. And yet it's so normalized among the media class, no one even blinks an eye.

Where are the Pinocchios?!
Sure, there's some marginal qualification - "as a general rule" - but that cuts both ways. As a general rule, the US Govt prints money, and generates spendable revenue from doing so, and has done so, continuously, since the birth of the republic.
There was even a political party for a while (Greenbackers) dedicated to highlighting how important this power was!

It is no surprise the platinum coin seems so crazy to so many - it's the first time most have even heard of seigniorage. Whose fault is that if not the media?

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More from @rohangrey

Rohan Grey Profile picture
May 11
[Very Serious Dems, in Charlie Kelly Voice]: "can we talk to you about the debt ceiling? We've been dying to talk to you about the debt ceiling all day." Image
"So we have 3 ways of dealing with the ceiling.

The first is the plain meaning of legislation. We just basically ignore that. We figure, if Congress thought it was important for us to use existing law to avoid default, they'd have given us the legal authority to do so." ImageImage
"The second is extraordinary measures. We just take existing funds, and move them around in our accounts, and that buys us a few more months of debt issuance." Image
Read 4 tweets
Rohan Grey Profile picture
May 8
This is not the right way to do this, imo.

There are still options that Biden hasn't used (Ie the platinum coin) which means the ostensible tension between the debt ceiling and spending commitments doesn't actually exist yet.

14A should be invoked *after* coin is attempted.
I'd also have just issued the bonds and waited for others to sue rather than preemptively suing. Permission vs forgiveness, and all that.

But important to note: if the Court rejects this arg, then the coin remains a viable alternative since it's a legal way to finance spending.
At a more fundamental level, the entire premise of this argument is that the executive branch can only either tax or borrow to raise funds - but this is empirically and conceptually false. The executive branch also *creates* money, its the most fundamental power. Missing 4th leg.
Read 6 tweets
Rohan Grey Profile picture
Mar 3
Extremely excited to see this piece on "Paths Toward an Acceptable Public Digital Currency" by Jay Stanley at the @ACLU:

aclu.org/paths-toward-a…
Some key highlights/personal favs:

1) Acknowledging from the outset that while a public digital dollar and CBDC are often conflated, the former could also be issued by the Treasury Department

(For more on this, see my Congressional testimony here: rohangrey.net/files/testimon…).
2) Pointing out that all the major forms of privately intermediated digital payments - that the Fed is using as the baseline/status quo from which a CBDC is ostensibly building on top of - have huge privacy & censorship & inclusion/access issues relative to publicly issued cash
Read 13 tweets
Rohan Grey Profile picture
Mar 1
CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT

Our Money, Our Future: Promoting Economic Democracy in Oregon Through Public Banking

A 3-day, public, hybrid conference spanning law, economics, and politics/organizing, held at @willamette_u, March 23-25.

ourmoneyourfuture.org
Hosts: @WillametteLaw, @WillametteMBA & WU Econ Dept

Cosponsors: @WillametteLRev, @ORpublicbank, @LPE_Project, @themmtnetwork, @thepublicmoney.

Ft. @StephanieKelton, @NathanTankus, @Kiffmeister, @sonjadav, @ecuarauz, @RaulACarrillo, @tymoignee, @J_LaRosa415, @sydiot,
@geeta_minocha, @therealhannahmt, @tsgouros, @johndhaskell, @keliemcwilliams, @mandolinkelly, and others.

Register here:

ourmoneyourfuture.org
Read 4 tweets
Rohan Grey Profile picture
Dec 21, 2022
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
Rohan Grey Profile picture
Dec 20, 2022
@TyKeynes This is why the trillion dollar coin is so important, both symbolically and legally. The need for a +ve balance interday (but not intraday) is indeed a relevant legal constraint. But, at least in the US context (and thus conceptually, if not practically in every case), the TGA
@TyKeynes can be refilled through a range of mechanisms, only one of which is issuing bonds. Greenbacks can also be issued, albeit up to their own instrument-specific "ceiling" which happens to be orders of magnitude lower than the ceiling on Tsys (but otherwise legally identical).
@TyKeynes And coins have their own restrictions, but they are primarily qualitative not quantitative (you can issue as many quarters as you want, provided they are worth 25c each etc). But the platinum Coin stands as the one example lacking both qualitative and quantitative restrictions
Read 8 tweets

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