Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Ellen Brown — How Obama Could Beat the Debt Ceiling and Go Out a Hero


Ellen lists the ways that the president could deal with the debt limit if he wished. Instead, he chose to politic it.

Web of Debt
How Obama Could Beat the Debt Ceiling and Go Out a Hero
Ellen Brown

5 comments:

Salsabob said...

Sorry, but there is probably no clearer example of how brilliant MMTers are in understanding the monetary system and how absolutely clueless they are of our political system.

If Obama coined the coin, he would be impeached. Even if we go over the debt ceiling, if he coins the coin too early, he would be impeached.

The only way for him to coin the coin without suffering impeachment would be to await the food riots and have GOP House morons joining the crowds in cheering him as he rode his horse down Constitution Avenue from the Treasury to the FED to deliver the coin.

I still have my fingers crossed - counting on morons being morons, even those elected.

John said...

"Sorry, but there is probably no clearer example of how brilliant MMTers are in understanding the monetary system and how absolutely clueless they are of our political system."

Clueless is putting it mildly, and impeachment would probably be the least of Obama's problems.

In any case, like the minting of the proposed platinum coin, this is all absurdly academic. The ceiling will be raised. After the usual flag waving theatrics, the Republicans will do what they've always done and do the only sensible and rational thing by raising the debt ceiling.

Only the truly dimwitted cloud cuckoo demented fantasist Tea bagger will hold out, and that's not guaranteed. For instance, when Wall Street collapsed in 2008, the hard money Tea baggers and their fellow travellers conveniently forgot all their alleged devotion to Austrian and Randian precepts. Money talks, bullshit walk.

Republicans never give a sitting Republican president a hard time over the debt ceiling. Only Democrat presidents are subject to these political shenanigans. It's politics, and it's as predictable as it is understandable.

Random said...

I disagree. Minting a coin of a ridiculous magnitude to "pay off the national debt" and then seeing there is no hyperinflation would likely be a WTF? moment for the public. The cognitive dissonance will hurt their brains.
It will make them question things.
Then you explain. Predict and explain.

Salsabob said...

John/Random, you're both right. So we will be left with the t-baggers and no chance for MMT to be viscerally understood by everyone. The brain tumor analogy holds - we won't risk the surgical procedure (going over the debt ceiling) but instead live with the slow deterioration of the entire body (t-bagger politics, mass monetary/economic ignorance, and the asinine consequences).

John said...

Salsabob,

Again you're quite right. Only something like the Great Depression will be enough to amputate the "common sense" hard money view out of existence, leaving a small hard money crowd crying about their phantom limb. That's why politicians exist: having brainwashed the public with nonsense, they have to hold the ring in case the nonsense intrudes on the functioning of the state and the functioning of the state in the interests of big business.

But the idea that a centrist Republican fiscal conservative like Obama will order the minting of a platinum coin with any denomination he wishes is sheer fantasy. Almost as fantastic is the notion that the Republicans won't raise the debt ceiling.