

Ask HN: What is the trillion dollar platinum coin? - rikacomet

I just saw a few articles, stating, that white house  is considering minting a 1 trillion dollar (wtf?) platinum coin. So my question is, what is it? and is it legit? what are the pro's and con's ?
======
stonemetal
There are laws concerning how much money the government is allowed to print.
The odd thing though is it is by material, so much paper, gold, copper, and
silver money. There is a loophole in so far as it doesn't mention how much
platinum money can be printed(not sure you would call it a loop hole since it
also doesn't mention how much green cheese money can be made). So the proposal
is to print their way out of the debt crisis. It isn't a serious proposal as
it would cause insane amounts of inflation(other countries that have tried it
have hit inflation rates above 100% a year). The white house has officially
come out against it.

[http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/01/white-house-
den...](http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/01/white-house-denies-call-
for-trillion-dollar-coin-to-avoid-debt-ceiling/)

~~~
cedricd
No offense, but that answer was wrong in every respect. There's a law that
allows the Treasury to mint platinum coins of any denomination. It only
mentions platinum. It wouldn't print the way out of the debt crisis. It's just
an accounting trick that also wouldn't cause inflation.

~~~
stonemetal
None taken, I only know the little I have read about it in the papers. Though
I am not sure how you can increase the money supply by a trillion dollars and
not see any inflation. While the coin may never go into circulation it would
be on the books and spent as if it was otherwise there would be no point.

------
tokenadult
The trillion dollar coin is a speculative idea that will not happen in
reality. It has been all over the news in the United States during the last
week.

[https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws...](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&q=trillion+dollar+coin&oq=trillion+dollar+coin)

