Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Moron Metaphor Alert: The Platinum Coin is a "Flying Spaghetti Monster"


Now Reuters' Felix Salmon dispenses some more manna for the morons:
Let’s be clear about this: no one’s going to mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin. Nor is anybody going to mint a million million-dollar platinum coins. ..... The trillion-dollar coin is the fiscal equivalent of the Flying Spaghetti Monster...
Top shelf stuff from the libertarian government authority denigrating Salmon here. Very professional analysis. Salmon and Reuters are disgraced.

Hey Salmon:  The morons thank you very much for helping them to remain so!

Aside for non-morons:  Here is some d-band electron receptive "Platinum Level" stuff from Joe Firestone over at NEP today:
That’s why progressives need to wake up, and not only defend PCS against a Republican attack that has already begun; but also come forward with their own PCS proposals that will go beyond the TDC and offer PCS options that will put an end to the political basis of austerity!
Joe makes the case that coin seignorage is NOT some sort of "small ball" sort of gimmick, it goes to the heart of the issue of whether or not we can recognize the basic fiscal authority of our civil government... Joe is THE BEST out there on this issue.

13 comments:

widmerpool said...

I don't know. Felix talks about how stupid a debt ceiling is and he's right to say nobody is actually going to mint this coin. Felix is certainly not a libertarian.

Unknown said...

the platinum coin was mentioned on cnbc this morning. A guest also mentioned the possibility of issuing consols - a perpetual bond which is funtionally the equivalent of stock or equity. THe term consol comes from "consolidated stock".

Chris Cook has an interesting article related to this:

http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/resilience/2012/01/09/a-stock-answer/

Randall Wray also mentioned "treasury warrants" the other day.

Matt Franko said...

y,

all good!

Maybe this is starting to turn.... fingers crossed.... rsp

Matt Franko said...

wid,

"Felix is certainly not a libertarian."

He manifestly cannot recognize authority and is aiding and abetting ignorance of the same here with this "spaghetti" thing...

Joe in contrast can see the "larger picture"...

rsp,

John Zelnicker said...

Just turned on CNN and caught the end of a segment on the coin where they obviously had been making fun of the idea. Might be able to catch it in the next half hour as they usually repeat these segments several times.

I'm glad it's getting some notice in the MSM, but I wish they could be serious about this stuff.

Morons and their mouthpieces.

Anonymous said...

- a perpetual bond which is funtionally the equivalent of stock or equity. y

Consols are an abomination since they would put a country in perpetual debt to the consol owners.

Unknown said...

no different to interest-bearing money (i.e. interest-bearing reserve balances) really.

Basically you're saying that anything above a zero interest rate is "an abomination". That's a bit over the top.

Clonal said...

See Philip Diehl's comments

Former Head of U.S. Mint: beowulf and JKH are 100% correct

and Mike's post
Obama Will be Forced to Issue the Coin

Matt Franko said...

Clonal,

Is that THE Philip Diehl? or is that some sort of "cyber impersonation" type thing...

I've assumed it is the actual person but I could be mistaken....

rsp,

Unknown said...

looks like the real deal

Unknown said...

Paul Krugman adds another idea to the list of options: 'Moral Obligation Coupons'

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/moral-obligation-coupons/

Clonal said...

Matt

On Philip Diehl, I have no way of knowing. However, the language of the letter and the memo would indicate authenticity. Authenticity can also be checked by looking at the IP addresses of the poster. But I have no way of checking. The owners of the blog would be able to look at the blog and find out where the comment originated from.

Legally, the minimum time for ISP's to hold their logs is two weeks. Most hold them for longer. But to get that information, you would require legal authorization

Matt Franko said...

C,

Hate for it to be a "set up"....

(FD: some might say I have a problem with "trust" ;)