Opposition rising further. John Carney contributes his lawyerly opinion.
CNBC NetNet
Sorry Folks, The $1 Trillion Coin Is Unconstitutional
John Carney | Senior Editor
John follows up with If The $1 Trillion Coin Is Illegal, Isn't The Fed Illegal Too?
14 comments:
The platinum coin solution seems to me to be at least arguably authorized by statute. But that statute seems to represent an unconstitutional delegation of legislative authority.
It's difficult to see this as a greater statutory delegation of authority than oh, say... the enormous, far-reaching powers granted in the federal reserve act.
Bold title to the article considering its inconclusive conclusion. … "seems"
Even if legal I see now way the Obama administration would exercise the option.
Well, the Government could pay off its debt my "minting" a trillion one dollar coins made of copper, and copper/zinc foils totaling to a 1 micron thickness. This should be perfectly legal.
A trillion such coins would result in a stack a 1000 km high. But this would be equivalent to a block of metal 552 cu meters in volume
from 31 USC § 5112 - Denominations, specifications, and design of coins
Quote:
(1) a dollar coin that is 1.043 inches in diameter.
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The dollar coin shall be golden in color, have a distinctive edge, have tactile and visual features that make the denomination of the coin readily discernible, be minted and fabricated in the United States, and have similar metallic, anti-counterfeiting properties as United States coinage in circulation on the date of enactment of the United States $1 Coin Act of 1997.
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(1) United States coins shall have the inscription “In God We Trust”. The obverse side of each coin shall have the inscription “Liberty”. The reverse side of each coin shall have the inscriptions “United States of America” and “E Pluribus Unum” and a designation of the value of the coin. The design on the reverse side of the dollar, half dollar, and quarter dollar is an eagle......The Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Congress, shall select appropriate designs for the obverse and reverse sides of the dollar coin. The coins have an inscription of the year of minting or issuance.
These are the only specifications laid down for "one dollar coins"
The critical thing is that the transfer of thes coins to the Fed would not be considered to be deficit spending. It would be paying of the debt with "real" money!
BTW
552 cu m is a block 25ft by 25 ft by 25 ft
now you have to work out how much that would cost to do... :)
Carney works for CNBC and I am sure they don't like the idea over there. Just take a look at the slant of their editorial content. Becky Quick? Kernan? Are you kidding? Don't you see why he's writing this and remember how fast he turned against MMT and ran to Cullen's Monetary Realism? Ha!!!
Not unconstitutional - just silly.
I'm pro-14 Amendment solution, and apparently so is Mr. Reid.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/04/harry-reid-obama-debt-ceiling_n_2410557.html
Shame that the Obama administration stated their opposition to the idea in the last debt ceiling debacle.
You know you've got a problem when Harry Reid is more or less telling you to man up. : /
Edmund,
I believe they have a legal opinion from WH counsel that it is not a constitutional issue.. rsp,
JK,
Right... it's definitely unconstitutional in his United States of libertarian utopia fantasyland .. where the govt has no authority at all...
the US of A.. meh not so much...
Not unconstitutional. Carney is a CNBC "bot."
In order to bring a case before a Federal Court, a plaintiff must show that he has legal "standing," that he has been harmed. The Roberts court has taken a narrow stance on legal standing.
For example, I cannot bring a case against the government for illegal wiretapping & surveillance because I cannot prove that I am being wiretapped and surveilled. Since I cannot prove that I have been "harmed," I have no legal standing.
So ..... who would be harmed by minting a trillion dollar platinum coin ?
The truth is that the government does all kinds of things that are probably "wrong" or "illegal," and for the most part gets away with it because who's going to stop them ?
Agree that Obama is not made of the right stuff to mint the coin, but the coin option is still useful as an educational tool, to demonstrate that THERE ARE ALTERNATIVES.
Right on, Dan!!
John glosses over the standing issue, but it's the key issue. No one has standing to sue. The conservatives on the Supreme Court have scaled back (eviscerated?) standing.
The suggestion that a Congressperson has standing is silly. Congress wrote the law! It's a political question that the Supreme Court has routinely ruled is not their domain.
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