Every alternate news site thinks highly of Paul Krugman and the only reason can be his celebrity. Nothing he has said about economic inequality or the GOP is new. Everything is said so commonly nowadays that for people who look at his actual intellectual history, all he's doing is joining the bandwagon for attention (especially when you take into account Bernie Sanders). In other words, he is an example of an idiot who gets free publicity that gives him power over the feeble minded because he is a celebrity and NOT because of his ideas.
Here are some of Paul Krugman's original ideas.
Salon: Paul Krugman’s shameful colonialism: Why the progressive economist has Puerto Rico all wrongThe New York Times columnist urges unemployed Puerto Ricans to migrate to the mainland. If only it were that simple
The Trillion Dollar Coin:
Daily Show: Paul Krugman & the Trillion-Dollar Coin - Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman takes aim at Jon's recent analysis of the trillion-dollar coin. (4:00)
Real Clear Politics: Jon Stewart hits back at Paul Krugman after the New York Times columnist criticized him for mocking the trillion-dollar coin idea. "If somebody is ruining their brand with a trillion-dollar coin idea, I don't think it's the non-economist," Stewart said.
CBS News Pointers On The Trillion Dollar Coin:
1. It is legal and it's possible
Regardless of what they think about it, economists on the left and the right point out that it is completely legal.
Other things that have been and still are legal:
Has been legal:
Related post.
Still is:
The Daily Show covers the different kinds of laws the "lawmakers" slipped into a SPENDING bill: The Grand Budget-Passed Hotel - Congress manages to overcome its gridlock in order to pass a budget plan that will avert a government shutdown, but the bill includes some sneaky last-minute additions. (8:57):
It's clear the regulations preventing another collapse were removed through, what basically amounts to, a bribe. This is simply legal corruption like the Congress's Insider Trading scam...
The GOP's/FoxNews's Primary Goal Is To Do Anything To Win Elections INCLUDING Destroying The Economy If Necessary!
GOP's Economic Theories - Disproven Under George Bush - Continue To Be The Basis For Their Policies PROVING GOP Are An Ideological Party & Not A Reasonable One
CBS 2. The coin itself does not have to literally be worth $1 trillion
It's common sense: just because there's a $99 difference in the value of a $1 and a $100 bill, the materials that are used to make them are worth the same. Translation: The $1 trillion dollar coin does not need to be made of $1 trillion worth of platinum.
Not having money tied to value is what led to the 2008 financial collapse:
Related post: How De-Regulation Led To The Financial Crisis of 2008 & Why All Banks Need To Come With A Disclaimer Till The Glass-Steagal Act Is Re-Implemented
CBS 3. The coin would have no economic impact; it would no cause inflation
The reason this idea is so out of left field is because the Federal Reserve is the entity responsible for printing money, and every dollar the Fed prints must be backed by Treasury bonds and counted toward the U.S. debt. But the Treasury's printing of a trillion dollar coin would not have any connection to the debt. Because it would sit in a vault and not be part of the money supply and not backed by bonds, it would not skew the economic system and, therefore, can't cause inflation. But because this coin is sitting in a vault and the Treasury Department determines that it's worth $1 trillion, it is.
Yes, but that's another problem entirely;
An example of modern "Corporatism/Socialism":
A Bloomberg report reveals that the U.S. government loaned banks $7.7 trillion in secret bailout funds at no interest and then borrowed the money back at interest.
How was the Bail out money used? The big banks make money by taking the bailout money we gave them and lending it back to the government with interest. http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-december-1-2011/america-s-next-tarp-model
The Bloomberg Report:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-congress-gave-banks-13-billion-in-income.html Saved by the bailout, bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled out more money and debated new rules aimed at preventing the next collapse.
A fresh narrative of the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 emerges from 29,000 pages of Fed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and central bank records of more than 21,000 transactions. While Fed officials say that almost all of the loans were repaid and there have been no losses, details suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger.
‘Change Their Votes’
“When you see the dollars the banks got, it’s hard to make the case these were successful institutions,” says Sherrod Brown, a Democratic Senator from Ohio who in 2010 introduced an unsuccessful bill to limit bank size. “This is an issue that can unite the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. There are lawmakers in both parties who would change their votes now.”
The size of the bailout came to light after Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, won a court case against the Fed and a group of the biggest U.S. banks called Clearing House Association LLC to force lending details into the open.
The Fed, headed by Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, argued that revealing borrower details would create a stigma -- investors and counterparties would shun firms that used the central bank as lender of last resort -- and that needy institutions would be reluctant to borrow in the next crisis. Clearing House Association fought Bloomberg’s lawsuit up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the banks’ appeal in March 2011.
$7.77 Trillion
The amount of money the central bank parceled out was surprising even to Gary H. Stern, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1985 to 2009, who says he “wasn’t aware of the magnitude.” It dwarfed the Treasury Department’s better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Add up guarantees and lending limits, and the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March 2009 to rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year.
CBS 4. The trillion dollar coin is purely political - just like the debt ceiling
Because the trillion dollar coin has no impact on the economy, conservatives decry it as political laziness. They say it causes a perception problem that the U.S. is unable to deal with its financial problems. "You're messing with international confidence," Holtz-Eakin said. "That confidence is fragile."
Problem here is precedence. Things are too bad to be taking such things lightly, especially from a NY Times
columnist. Take the media's cover-up of the Iraq War for instance (i.e. we lack the transparency even in our media to consider giving an easy way for the ruling elite to destroy the economy even if by "accident" again):
The Iraq War Cover-Up
CBS 5. Minting of the $1 trillion coin is a long shot
Thank God.
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