A real U.S. President would mint those trillion dollar coins

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If I did that sort of thing as a private person I would be put away for 20 years for counterfeiting.

ruveyn

Didn't Zimbabwe already do this?

You do realize that it's comically absurd to compare an industrialized country with UNDERUTILIZATION of it's capacity to a third world nation that LACKS such capacity, right?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei_B5MTJofI[/youtube]

I was talking about when they printed those 100 billion dollar bills over there.

That's what I said, you're (insinuating) a comparison between what they did in a third world country and what the proposal to do in America is. Zimbabwe ran into trouble because they grew the money supply well in excess of any potential for industrial growth. The USA, on the contrary, has EXCESS CAPACITY right now and merely needs effective demand.

Well, as expected, this plan didn't fly. Instead, the brilliant idea of austerity in the face of what looks either like a decade of slow growth or a second dip was presued.

The "brilliance" of bozos who don't know what a CYCLICALLY exaggerrated deficit is never ceases to amaze me.

Without a war we can win, the economy of the U.S. looks like it will stagnate for a fairly long time. FDR got the U.S. out of the Great Depression by participating in the European wars. First as an arms supplier, then as a belligernt. Where is our war? The wars we are currently fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq are doing us no good. The country is not on a full war footing so these wars are just a drain on the economy.

The war that did prosper us, the Cold War with the Communist nations is over. We won it. Damn! That lead to our ruination.

ruveyn

Yes. But the President cannot on his own initiative produce the coin and put it in circulation. That still requires an act of Congress starting with a bill in the House. The constitution does not grant the President any power to appropriate funds or mint coins.

Congress cannot give the president (legally anyway, any power not granted to him by the Constitution).

ruveyn[/quote]

How many ways do I have to say this: the Act of Congress already exists. Congress has given the Secretary of the Treasury the legal authority to mint plantinum coinage without any further action on the part of Congress. Here it is, chapter and verse:



Congress has not delegated its power through this legislation, it has authorized minting in prescisely the same section that it has authorized the minting of all other U.S. coinage. A new Act of Congress does not get passed every time the U.S. Mint presses out a new roll of pennies--rather, the Mint relies on the authority already conferred on the Secretary of the Treasury by Congress.

Now, you might argue that Congress cannot authorize the Secretary of the Treasury to do this--but in that case, all circulating US coinage is currently unlawful.