This all too serious joke has steadily gained traction among the self anointed cognoscenti.
Probably one reason they think “Hope®” it will work is because it is “legal”.
We don’t make the loopholes. We just find them. The Treasury can’t print money on its own, because the money supply is supposed to be the strict purview of the Federal Reserve … but that might not be quite so strict after all, thanks to a coin-sized exception. Congress passed a law in 1997, later amended in 2000, that gives the Secretary of the Treasury the authority to mint platinum coins, and only platinum coins, in whatever denomination and quantity he or she wants. That could be $100, or $1,000, or … $1 trillion.
And we know that Congress has the power “to coin money and regulate the value thereof”, right? The Constitution says so, right?
This is why I obsess about the meaning of “regulate”. Regulate does not mean dictate or direct, it means to make regular, to standardize.
This is what regulating the value of coin looks like. (my bold)
On April 2, 1792, U.S. Secretary of the TreasuryAlexander Hamilton reported to Congress the precise amount of silver found in Spanish milled dollar coins in common use in the States. As a result, the United States dollar was defined[12] as a unit of weight equaling 371 4/16th grains (24.057 grams) of pure silver, or 416 grains of standard silver (standard silver being defined as 1,485 parts fine silver to 179 parts alloy).[13] It was specified that the “money of account” of the United States should be expressed in those same “dollars” or parts thereof.
Contrary to the quoted link from Atlantic, it is the Constitution, not the Federal Reserve System, that prevents the Treasury from printing money. After their experience with the Continental Dollar, in the Constitution of 1787 they deliberately gave Congress only the power to coin money.
“Some think that the rebel bills depreciated because people lost confidence in them or because they were not backed by tangible assets,” writes financial historian Robert E. Wright. “Not so. There were simply too many of them.”[12] Congress and the states lacked the will or the means to retire the bills from circulation through taxation or the sale of bonds.[13]
Sound familiar? Unable to find buyers for all of the bonds the Treasury is exchanging for spending money, the Fed System has purchased $1.676 trillion of them with newly created dollars. Once again we cannot retire ‘paper’ money from circulation by either taxation or selling bonds. There were too many Continental dollars because they were not backed by tangible assets. The post 1787 dollar was a unit of weight, not an arbitrary number. Regulating the value meant making all coins the same weight of metal per dollar of value.
The trillion dollar coin idea will not fit the Constitution but with the judicial consensus being that “regulate”, instead of “to make regular”, means “exercise dictatorial control over”, then why not “regulate” that the coin is worth a trillion?
A trillion dollar coin. Is this what he meant by “Hope® and Change”. Got to admit, sometimes this collapse is entertaining. If you like dark comedy.