Daily Archives: February 2, 2013

Framing Platinum Coin Seigniorage: Part Four, Political/Economic Objections

By Joe Firestone

This series provides a framing document for Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PCS). In the three previous parts of the series, I pointed out that there are three classes of opponents of High Value Platinum Coin Seigniorage (HVPCS, $30 T and above). The first and largest group opposes all Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PCS) of whatever type. The second, opposes HVPCS, but favors using the Trillion Dollar Coin (TDC) for the limited purpose of avoiding the debt ceiling. The third, opposes HVPCS, and doesn’t really favor using the TDC either, except, perhaps, as a last resort to avoid the debt ceiling. It favors an incremental approach to PCS beginning perhaps in the millions or billions in face value, and over a long period of time, after giving people years to adjust to Treasury using platinum coins with unusual, and unprecedented, face values, eventually building up to a TDC.

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Fantasy Football, Platinum Futures and the Future of Platinum

By Dale Pierce

For the present, all MMT policy advocacy is fantasy football. Everything we talk about is real, and everything we help to prove or explain or demonstrate or clarify is important – and will be much, much more important in the future. And, of course, there’s nothing wrong with fantasy football – it’s a useful exercise for learning about and interpreting the game. Similarly, the extension of theoretical MMT principles to practical problem-solving is a useful – even a vital – exercise. But nothing we advocate today is really going to happen today – at least not in America. I still keep hoping that some high-up political figure in Latin America, or Latvia, or maybe Iceland will come out with an up-front endorsement, along with an explicitly MMT-informed political platform. And I think that’s a worthwhile goal for us as well – provided that we understand just what it is that we are doing.

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Don’t End Up Like Bill Black

The Alternative* Frontline Untouchables interview

*This video is a parody of the Frontline Untouchables interview that aired recently on PBS