Disconnect: High Value Platinum Coin Vs. Austerity!

A little disconnect: what President Obama, through Treasury and the Federal Reserve, [1] really said last Saturday:

"We're running out of money because the Republican House may not allow us to float any more debt; so I took the Platinum Coin off the table just to ensure that we would!

Next month, I'll give you the gift of austerity, because, naturally, we're now really gonna run out of money!"

Despite Saturday's announcements by the Treasury and the Fed the Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PCS) [2] legislation is still on the books. For the President not to use it to fill the public purse with enough funds to banish the fiscal conditions that underlie austerity politics -- the national debt, and the ability to cover the deficit for a long time to come -- is inexcusably corrupt, fiscally and economically irresponsible, and completely opposed to the public purpose that the President is supposed to serve.

So, I want to tell the President that for as long as PCS is on the books, and he and others are claiming that we need austerity because we are “running out of money,” he has the duty and the obligation to mint a game-changing High Value Platinum Coin, for example, a $60 T platinum coin. [3] After this legal tender coin is credited by the Fed, the presence of $60 T in the Treasury General Account (TGA), and its immediate use to begin paying off the national debt, will make it very plain that there is no need for austerity; no need to cut SS, Medicare, and Medicaid; no need to cut Head Start, no need to cut anything that's working.

Yesterday, the White House line [4] was that temporary fixes to the debt ceiling problem like the platinum coin would not solve the budgetary and political problems faced by the Government. Our mainstream media people did their thing by failing to call out the President on that – probably because they, themselves, have never dared think about any other PC option [5] apart from the Trillion Dollar Coin. It's easy to see, however, that a $60 T coin wouldn't be a “temporary fix,” spawning crises every few months, even if it wouldn't last forever. The fact that a $1 Trillion Dollar Coin would not solve our debt ceiling problem for very long, isn't an argument for taking High Value PCS (HVPCS) off the table at all.

So, I call on the President to mint that $60 T coin now! [6] I call on him to abandon austerity and to create financial plenty in Federal fiscal policy by using game-changing HVPCS. Austerity and “grand bargains” are “the great betrayal!” We don't need such “greed bargains.” We need a full public purse, and then we need to get Congress to open the purse for programs that fulfill public purpose.

I call on others to join me in beginning again to blog, comment, facebook, and tweet about PCS; but this time to forget about the TDC, which was always the wrong coin, and focus on #minttheHVPC instead.

Up the ante! Make this about ending austerity, and using the right platinum coin to create the political space needed for doing it! Forget about them taking PCS off the table! As long as it's legal it's still on the Table! Mint that HVPC! End Austerity!

(Cross-posted from Correntewire.com [7].)