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From Ezra Klein on Washington Post
The Treasury Department will not mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin to get around the debt ceiling. If they did, the Federal Reserve would not accept it.
That’s the bottom line of the statement that Anthony Coley, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, gave me today. “Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit,” he said.
Official White House Statement on Huff Post
There are only two options to deal with the debt limit: Congress can pay its bills or they can fail to act and put the nation into default," said Press Secretary Jay Carney. "When Congressional Republicans played politics with this issue last time putting us at the edge of default, it was a blow to our economic recovery, causing our nation to be downgraded. The President and the American people won't tolerate Congressional Republicans holding the American economy hostage again simply so they can force disastrous cuts to Medicare and other programs the middle class depend on while protecting the wealthy. Congress needs to do its job.
With this, the White House has now ruled out the two best options for preventing a default in the event that the House GOP refused to life the debt ceiling. The White House has been quite adamant that the other alternative (invoking the 14th Amendment) is not acceptable.
So now the stakes are high, as The White House has refused to negotiate with the GOP on a debt ceiling hike.
What bargaining chips does The White House hold? Unclear.
~ Joe Weisenthal on Business Insider
. . . the last debt ceiling confrontation crept up on the White House because Obama refused to believe that Republicans would actually threaten to provoke default. Is the WH being realistic this time, or does it still rely on the sanity of crazies?
The thing is, the coin option sounds silly, but it clearly obeys the letter of the law. As far as I can tell, none of the other options — other than outright surrender — has the same virtue.
. . . And default in any of these senses would risk a huge collapse of confidence.
So is there a plan, or will it just be another case of tough talk followed by a tail-between-the-legs retreat?
~ Economist Paul Krugman on NYT
"...the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
— Joseph Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) January 12, 2013
“It was the worst news I’ve ever heard in my life.” – @thestalwart #RIPTheCoin
— Stefan Becket (@stefanjbecket) January 13, 2013
So #MintTheCoin appears to be off the table. Sigh. The world just seems a bit more boring now.
— Matt Cocci (@MattCocci) January 13, 2013
We could have had it all! Trolling in the deeeeep!!! #RIPtheCoin
— Rowena Z. Takis (@TheGhostScream) January 13, 2013
And, in memory, I will now watch The Simpsons episode "The Trouble With Trillions" #RIPthecoin
— EmilyAnneR (@PhatCharlie1) January 13, 2013
We hardly knew ye #RIPthecoin
— Jon Lustig (@jonlustig) January 12, 2013
Aw man, no coin? Well, at least bourbon still exists.
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) January 12, 2013
@jbarro I think what you're looking for is a MINT julep.
— Ellen Martel (@emarty) January 12, 2013
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