Can the Federal Reserve Really Refuse To Accept and To Credit A Platinum Coin Deposited By the US Mint?

Posted on January 26, 2013 by | 28 comments

By Joe Firestone

The issue of whether the Fed can really refuse to accept and credit a deposit of a platinum coin with its face value, is being raised frequently on blog posts about Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PCS) and the Trillion Dollar Coin (TDC). In the past, I’ve argued that the Fed cannot; and the final decision on taking the TDC off the table was actually made by the President, and not by Chairman Bernanke.

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Goldman Sachs Proof that God hates its Customers

Posted on January 26, 2013 by | 9 comments

By William K. Black

The chief executive of Goldman Sachs, which has attracted widespread media attention over the size of its staff bonuses, says he believes banks serve a social purpose and are “doing God’s work.”

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Goldman Sachs: Doing “God’s Work” by inflicting the Wages of Sin Globally

Posted on January 26, 2013 by | 8 comments

By William K. Black

The central point that I want to stress as a white-collar criminologist and effective financial regulator is that Goldman Sachs is not a singular “rotten apple” in a healthy bushel of banks.  Goldman Sachs is the norm for systemically dangerous institutions (SDIs) (the so-called “too big to fail” banks).  Impunity from the laws, crony capitalism that degrades democracy, and massive national subsidies produce exceptionally criminogenic environments.  Those environments are so perverse that they produce epidemics of “control fraud.”  Control fraud occurs when the persons who control a seemingly legitimate entity use it as a “weapon” to defraud.  In finance, accounting is the “weapon of choice.”  It is important to remember, however, that other forms of control fraud maim and kill thousands.

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The OCC’s Tragic Response to the Frontline expose: The Untouchables

Posted on January 26, 2013 by | 7 comments

By William K. Black

On January 25, 2013, I made this comment on Frontline’s web site discussing its documentary: “The Untouchables” and an accompanying (January 22, 2013) article by Jason Breslow entitled: Were Bankers Jailed In Past Financial Crises?

I addressed two statements in that article.  The first statement reads:

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Why the World Economic Forum and Goldman Sachs are Capitalism’s Worst Enemies

Posted on January 26, 2013 by | 9 comments

By William K. Black

It is fitting that Goldman Sachs is the recipient of this year’s “Public Eye” designation, but it is even more fitting that it is being announced during the World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos.  Goldman Sachs exemplifies the travesty that WEF has created.  It is not the worst of the worst.  It is representative of the financial world of systemically dangerous institutions (SDIs) that are spreading crony capitalism through the West.  The SDIs are the so-called “too big to fail (or prosecute)” banks.

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Downsides to the Platinum Coin; or Just Defense of the Status Quo?

Posted on January 25, 2013 by | 34 comments

By Joe Firestone

As part of a wonderful discussion thread on the legal basis for using Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PCS), following a post by beowulf (Carlos Mucha), the first to propose the Trillion Dollar Coin (TDC). Michael Sankowski, one of the founders of the Monetary Realism approach to economics offered a very long reply directed at High Value Platinum Coin Seignorage (HVPCS), and the TDC itself. Mike’s reply is a good example of the many misgivings people have about using PCS with face values in the trillions. Since Mike is a supporter, rather than opponent of PCS and believes that PCS is legal, I thought it would be worthwhile to deconstruct his long comment and show that his downsides are pretty speculative and don’t provide good grounds for supporting incrementalism is using PCS.

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Beowulf and Diehl Embrace Trillion Dollar Coin Incrementalism!

Posted on January 25, 2013 by | 30 comments

By Joe Firestone

A wonderful discussion thread has been going on at Monetary Realism (MR) after a very good new post by beowulf (Carlos Mucha), who first brought forward the proposal for the Executive Branch to use the authority provided in the 1996 Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PCS) legislation to fill the public purse, on whether the Fed had a legal basis for turning down PCS in the form of the Trillion Dollar Coin (TDC). I’ll leave the legal discussion for another blog post, since I agree with beo on these, and also need to review some legal arguments against the TDC by some George Washington University Professors. Here I want to write about some of the MR discussion relating to PCS options.

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From Central Bank Independence to Democratic Public Finance

Posted on January 25, 2013 by | 121 comments

By Dan Kervick

Effective governance in any country requires a well-designed system of public finance through which that government can achieve its various purposes and pursue the public interest.  If the system of public finance is poorly structured, the public interest will be poorly served.   So, badly designed systems of public finance must be altered or abolished. [1]

We have reached that point in the United States.  The present system of public finance in the US is inefficient and antiquated: its fusty architecture hampers the capacity of the national government to respond to economic fluctuations and crises in a timely and effective manner; its byzantine operational complexity thwarts democratic governance and generates pervasive public confusion about the full range of public policy options; and its over-reliance on government bonds means that wasteful and unearned profits flow to some of the most affluent members of US society, as they are paid service fees for intermediating what ought to be routine operations of the government.

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It Was Not a Free Lunch: The True Cost of the AIG Bailout

Posted on January 24, 2013 by | 12 comments

James Tilson and Robert E. Prasch

“If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.”  This old adage came to mind on December 11, 2012 when the U.S. Treasury made the announcement, reiterated unthinkingly by the press, that the AIG bailout was coming to an end with American taxpayers making a tidy profit on the deal.  In an effort to capitalize on the news, AIG has spent millions of dollars on a primetime ad campaign thanking America for the bailout, highlighting its success:  “We’ve repaid every dollar America lent us.  Everything, plus a profit of more than 22 billion.”  Unfortunately, this cleverly designed public relations maneuver deceives the taxpayer by distorting the perception of what has been a contentious use of government funds.

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Good Luck Stopping Austerity With Incremental Platinum Coin Seigniorage!

Posted on January 21, 2013 by | 144 comments

By Joe Firestone

Some have responded to the recent boomlet for using Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PCS) as a solution to the debt ceiling problem, by reacting to the ridicule visited upon PCS advocates by know-nothings like Heidi Moore of the Guardian and Matt O’Brien of the Atlantic, by proposing “smaller ball” PCS than the clearly inadequate Trillion Dollar Coin (TDC) itself. This post will focus on J. D. Alt’s interesting post which makes five points about the TDC debate as it was addressed on a recent Chris Hayes show.

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