The coin that could avert a federal debt default

An increasingly vocal chorus of commentators is saying that the U.S. Treasury should #MintTheCoin — issue a small platinum token, give it a face value of $1 trillion and deposit it at the Federal Reserve.

Why it matters: The gambit, if successful, would prevent the potentially catastrophic debt default that, thanks to Congressional intransigence on both sides of the aisle, is looming fast.

The big picture: When a U.S. Treasury secretary is tasked with averting a fast-looming potential cataclysm, she has to consider all possible options — even those that seem bizarre at first light.

• Treasury has reportedly considered and rejected the platinum-coin idea — but then again, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin said in 1995 that using the Exchange Stabilization Fund to bail out Mexico would be impossible. (He ended up doing exactly that just a few weeks later.)

How it works: The Fed, once given the coin, would credit Treasury's account with $1 trillion that would not count towards the national debt.

• The scheme looks legally feasible, although it would surely be challenged in the courts. Politically, however, it looks like a non-starter. The Democratic Party is capable of raising the debt ceiling through the reconciliation process, but refuses to do so for political reasons: They want Republicans to grapple with the fiscal reality of the bills they have already passed.
• Democrats control the White House and Treasury, neither of which seem to have any more appetite than their Congressional counterparts to let the country off the hook without Republicans being somehow involved.

[OCS: As noted, the progressive communist democrats could easily pass their spending bills without one Republican vote – but know it is political suicide for the Democrat Party when the future fiscal catastrophe manifests itself in hyperinflation, stagflation, and ultimately in recession.]

Driving the news: Bloomberg executive editor Joe Weisenthal, who has an invaluable FAQ on the issue, says that he's "been coinpilled since at least 2013". More recent converts include Nobel laureate Paul Krugman; economist Dean Baker; former Mint director Philip Diehl; members of Congress including Rashida Tlaib and Jerry Nadler; and others including Hayes Brown and Zachary Carter.

• They all agree that the debt ceiling serves no useful fiscal purpose: It's a dumb political cudgel that risks triggering an unconstitutional and catastrophic default.

[OCS: Here is a concrete example of the big lie and political misdirection. The debt service payments have been allocated out of existing funds for all outstanding debt, and there is no chance for default. And two, raising the debt ceiling ONLY covers new debt – money that will be spent in the future.

The threat of a government shutdown is nothing more than a scare tactic. All essential services will remain functional, all payments will be made to retirees, and some lucky (non-essential) government workers will receive retroactive pay for their vacation.]

• The trillion-dollar coin would effectively take that cudgel out of the hands of the politicians, rendering them slightly less capable of causing a calamity through inaction alone.

The other side: The trillion dollar coin would allow the government to spend money without borrowing it or raising it via taxation. That could be a dangerous precedent to set.

• Even if it's legally sound, no one knows whether it's physically possible to mint a platinum coin between now and Oct. 18, when the U.S. risks going into default. Maybe we'll find out at some point in the next few weeks.

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Exclusive: Government Secretly Orders Google To Identify Anyone Who Searched A Sexual Assault Victim’s Name, Address And Telephone Number

The U.S. government is secretly ordering Google to provide data on anyone typing in certain search terms, an accidentally unsealed court document shows. There are fears such “keyword warrants” threaten to implicate innocent Web users in serious crimes and are more common than previously thought.

It’s a rare example of a so-called keyword warrant and, with the number of search terms included, the broadest on record. Before this latest case, only two keyword warrants had been made public. One revealed in 2020 asked for anyone who had searched for the address of an arson victim who was a witness in the government’s racketeering case against singer R Kelly. Another, detailed in 2017, revealed that a Minnesota judge signed off on a warrant asking Google to provide information on anyone who searched a fraud victim’s name from within the city of Edina, where the crime took place.

While Google deals with thousands of such orders every year, the keyword warrant is one of the more contentious. In many cases, the government will already have a specific Google account that they want information on and have proof it’s linked to a crime.

But search term orders are effectively fishing expeditions, hoping to ensnare possible suspects whose identities the government does not know. It’s not dissimilar to so-called geofence warrants, where investigators ask Google to provide information on anyone within the location of a crime scene at a given time.   <Source>

Fed Prepares to Launch Review of Possible Central Bank Digital Currency

Officials will release a paper and solicit public comment, but are unlikely to decide soon on government-backed cryptocurrency

Fed officials are divided on the matter, making it unlikely they will decide any time soon on whether to create a digital dollar. Unlike private cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, a Fed version would be issued by and backed by the U.S. central bank, a government entity, as are U.S. paper dollar bills and coins.

[OCS: And unlike existing cryptocurrencies, there would be no limit on the number of digital coins available so that the value would drift downward by congressional whim, just like today’s fiat Federal Reserve notes. Plus, no transaction would be private.]

Advocates say a Fed digital dollar could make it faster and cheaper to move money around the financial system, bring into it people who lack bank accounts and provide an efficient way for the government to distribute financial aid.

[OCS: It would make government taxation easier, and your protest is likely to go nowhere.  Ironic, the digital currency must be racist as you would need some form of a positive photo or biometric identification to open an account. As I mentioned before, it will start with welfare payments, spread to Social Security payments, and then be mandated when all paper currency is withdrawn. Look for the wealthy, the criminals, and the multinationals to move asset ownership to offshore trusts.]

He and other Fed officials have said the Fed’s research is early and exploratory. He said at a Sept. 22 press conference that they would only consider issuing a so-called central bank digital currency—or CBDC—if they believed there were “clear and tangible benefits that outweigh any costs and risks.”

Mr. Powell has pointed to other challenges, noting many Americans actively use and prefer cash. He also said there are privacy issues that would need to be addressed, since a Fed CBDC system would in theory allow the central bank to see what every user did with the currency.

[OCS: This is the Chinese Communist system of social credit scoring with permissions and purchases linked to your support for the Communist Party.]

A Philadelphia Fed report warned that a U.S. central bank CBDC could destabilize the financial system in a crisis if people pull their money out of banks, mutual funds, stocks and other investments and plow it into the Fed’s ultrasafe currency.

[OCS: The proposed digital currency, like paper Federal Reserve Notes, is not backed by hard assets like precious metals but is a fiat currency backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. Meaningless in an increasing communist environment.]

Why the Fed Is Considering a Digital Dollar

Some advocates say CBDCs could help improve the effectiveness of monetary policy by allowing a central bank to change interest rates directly on accounts holding CBDCs. This could allow central banks to bypass often fickle financial markets and bring monetary policy right to the retail level.

[OCS: Google “negative interest rates,” which means the government charges you (in addition to taxation) for holding your money – forcing you to spend money before your purchasing power declines. Did I mention instant taxation?]

Private offerings of digital currencies have been extremely volatile, and in many cases have been associated with criminal activities and have so far failed to be adopted widely for daily transactions, such as for buying groceries or movie tickets.

[OCS: All asset classes have been used for criminal activity. But, you don’t see a federal property register yet!]

China created its own government-issued digital currency earlier this year and recently prohibited transactions using cryptocurrencies issued by nonmonetary authorities, naming bitcoin, ether and tether as examples. El Salvador, meanwhile, became the first country in the world to adopt bitcoin as a national currency alongside the U.S. dollar.

[OCS: It appears the Biden Administration is adopting the Communist Chinese programs – especially surveillance and social credit scoring.]

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