, THENation, 8 May The Rock-Star Appeal of Modern Monetary Theory”
n early 2013, Congress entered a death struggle—or a debt struggle, if you will—over the future of the US economy. A spate of old tax cuts and spending programs were due to expire almost simultaneously, and Congress couldn’t agree on a budget, nor on how much the government could borrow to keep its engines running. Cue the predictable partisan chaos: House Republicans were staunchly opposed to raising the debt ceiling without corresponding cuts to spending, and Democrats, while plenty weary of running up debt, too, wouldn’t sign on to the Republicans’ proposed austerity.
In the absence of political consensus, and with time running out, a curious solution bubbled up from the depths of the economic blogosphere. What if the Treasury minted a $1 trillion coin, deposited it in the government’s account at the Federal Reserve, and continued on with business as usual? The workaround was technically authorized by an obscure law that applies to commemorative platinum coins, and it didn’t require congressional approval, so the GOP couldn’t get in the way. What’s more, the cash would not be circulated, so it wouldn’t cause inflation.
Relevant Posts
- Ben-Haim, Yakov, Demertzis, Maria, van den End, Jan Willem, (2017), “Fundamental uncertainty and unconventional monetary policy: an info-gap approach”, Bruegel, 28 February
- Bletzinger, Tilman, Lalik, Magdlena, (2017), “The impact of constrained monetary policy on the fiscal multipliers on output and inflation”, ECB Working Paper Series No 2019, February