Trillion Dollar Coin?

Enter the trillion-dollar coin. It sounds nuts. But there's a loophole that actually lets the Treasury create coins in whatever value it wants, even $1 trillion. It's all straightforward enough. The Treasury would create one of these coins, deposit it at the Federal Reserve, and use the new money in its account to pay our bills if the debt ceiling isn't increased. This has gone from being just another wacky idea in the world of internet comments to something that's getting taken seriously due, in large part, to the efforts of Joe Weisenthal of Business Insider and Josh Barro of Bloomberg View to promote it. (Which you can follow on Twitter at #MintTheCoin). Their logic is that as silly as the trillion-dollar coin sounds, the debt ceiling is far sillier -- and much more destructive. 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-14/economics-is-platinum-what-the-trillion-dollar-coin-teaches-us.html

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/01/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-crazy-plan-to-save-the-economy-with-a-trillion-dollar-coin/266839/