TRASHFUTURE - AmeriCOIN feat. Joe Weisenthal

Episode Date: January 31, 2023

This week, we speak with Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) of the Bloomberg dot com Odd Lots podcast about minting the coin. But not just any coin: a strange loophole in a ’90s law designed to let the U.S. Mint produce collectors’ coins basically means that, if they wanted to, the director could order the Mint to issue a platinum coin of any denomination. Two dollars. Ten million dollars. One trillion dollars. But will the Democrats use this to completely undercut Republican debt ceiling brinkmanship? Probably not? Check out Odd Lots here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/odd-lots/id1056200096 If you want access to our Patreon bonus episodes, early releases of free episodes, and powerful Discord server, sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture *LONDON LIVE SHOW ALERT* SSee Trashfuture live in London on February 20 featuring special guest Nish Kumar! Get tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/trashfuture-live-podcast-with-nish-kumar-tickets-528472574697 *BERLIN LIVE SHOW ALERT* We're also doing a show on March 11 in Berlin! Get tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/trashfuture-live-in-berlin-tickets-525728156067 *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo’s upcoming live shows here: https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/live-shows Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to this free episode of Trash Future. It is myself, Riley. I'm joined in studio by Milo. I'll also have the three one damn you left him like hanging, you know, left him wasting into a full sense of security. That's what I'm doing. I'm playing a dangerous game. I thought I was going to get it, but I cannot believe that you have embarrassed me in front

of the Bloomberg OddLots podcast host and returning guest Joe Isenthal. Joe, how's it going? It's good. Thank you so much for having me. I'm psyched to be back. I was thrilled by the invite to talk about one of my favorite topics. Oh, we are literally thrumming with excitement about the coin. One of my favorite topics, the second after Riley explained it to me.

I've been thinking about the coin. We've been talking about the coin, speculating about what could go on the coin. Oh, yeah. Like, you know, I took a road trip with a friend of mine in 2021 when there was like a dead ceiling impact then. And I think he almost like kicked me out of the car because I was talking about the coins so much on that trip. And that whole dead ceiling fight wasn't nearly as contentious or even interesting as that

one. But I was like so thrilled by that. I've been like obsessed with the coin for 12 years now. So every time it comes up, like it's like the return of the cicadas or something. You don't know exactly when it's going to come, but every time it comes up, I get so excited. Yeah. For years, we've been hearing about Doge coin, this coin, and that coin, Bitcoin.

Well, now it's time for Coin Coin. Coin, the coin. The singular coin. It feels like coin season gets earlier every year. I don't do cool like coin spinning tricks with a Doge coin, but I imagine you can with a trillion dollar coin. And I imagine that's why that's my support of it. I feel like you should do a cool spinning trick in Times Square.

Show Biden like getting one airpist and like sitting at a poker table doing like tricks with the trillion dollar coin, like a poker chip. Yeah, exactly. Perfect. That's why I said that. So I also want to issue an apology to all of the partners of everyone who listens to this show, who will be hearing a lot about the coin for the next few days from your partner who listens to this show.

Yeah, their business partners will be hearing a lot about it in investment time. Although before we get into coin talk, which believe me, is going to take up 95% of this episode, I do want the coin brothers. I do just want to have one little piece of news. Yes, everyone sent me that Philip Hammond is getting a job at a crypto exchange and as soon as he got the job, said the UK needs to be a better market for crypto. Yes, I've seen the armored truck for suburban true crime moms to eviscerate their own children if they play near it.

The only piece of news we're getting into before we talk about the coin is that apparently Tesla has released a brand of tequila that explodes if you leave it in the sun. Is that any product that associated with Elon Musk that has not inexplicably fallen apart? You're going to find out like this is how we get the fucking last of us fungus virus is whatever grows on Teslas just grows on the inside of your stomach. If you drink this tequila, luckily no one will ever drink it. It just exists to be a sort of office on him. He's very good at creating incendiary products, isn't he?

He missed his true calling is the heir to Nobel. Yeah, he's sort of he is kind of like the Abu Hamza of the tech world. Look, we don't have a lot of time for news, so we got to go right onto the coin. You just want extra time to talk about the coin. Don't you? Yes. Yeah, thank you. So first, look, we've danced around this a little bit. But before we talk about Republicans and Democrats and the debt ceiling

and the legality of it, I want everyone to go around the room and tell me, what do you think of the physicality of the coin? When you picture the coin, what do you picture starting with Joe? Well, so the only thing that it needs to be legally is any sort of platinum disk. It says the word one trillion on it. It doesn't need to have the zeros and we can get into how I know that and all that. I love the idea of having it be very small, like maybe the size of a US dime, like because everyone imagines something really grandiose, you know,

and there's like and, you know, big face on it. So, like, you know, the whole thing is the beauty. Now, we'll get into it and the beauty of the coin is like how sound it is and how ridiculous it seems. But just to add that little bit of extra ridiculousness, I love the idea of like the coin being extremely tiny rather than anything grand. Like to me, that would be the best. You just like lose.

You just lose the trillion dollar coin just in your pockets in your change. Well, that could be fun because then in like, you know, a thousand years, they could be like an Indiana Jones type movie where someone has to pick out the real trillion dollar coin and they're all picking out these like giant publishers clearing house like novelty coins. And the real one is just like a dime that's on the floor. This is the trillion dollar coin of a Brandon. I I would go sort of the opposite direction.

I would make it not not just large, not just sort of like guys have to move it around on a trolley kind of large. I would make it so that the trillion dollar coin has to be sort of constructed almost entirely in space and sort of a Dyson coin. And it like reflects an appreciable amount of the sun's energy. And that's how we're going to solve climate change. Two birds with one stone. Yeah, as to what's on it, I think there's there's two options that I have in mind.

It has to commemorate something has to be commemorative, right? I would say we either get into why that is. Well, either do it commemorates the moment of the coin itself being made in a kind of fractal way, where we have like the coin being cast and like Zelensky is there giving a thumbs up. Xi Jinping and Putin are crying on the other side of it. George Washington is like looking down through a cloud. That's one option.

My other option is it's got to be made of platinum or palladium. I understand it. So I'll just platinum. Fuck, that ruins my idea. My plan was you have a bimetallic coin, one side's platinum, one side's palladium. And you have Joe Biden on one side, Trump on the other, moment of national healing. You know, America's back. Hussein, your vision of the coin, when you think coin, you think one.

Good question. Free things, more of a vision board than anything else. Number one, the two, the coin that Two-Face uses to make his decisions. Number two, a giant coin that you do spinning tricks with in Times Square. Just like doing the sort of spinning thing. And then the third one, I think is actually very similar to the Trump thing, which is on one side, you know, you know, you know, that period of time when everyone was sort of trying to own Trump by like showing pictures of him

kissing like other guys, I think that should be on one side of the coin. Wait, fuck, you've just you've set something off of me when you said spinning tricks, right? Doesn't have to be a disc, doesn't have to be a circle. It can be any sort of any shape. I was, yeah, I was toying. What if it's the arrow, like the, you know, the arrow to a pizza place that someone is like hired to spin? What if we just get one of those, but it's made of plastic?

I guess my thing was I feel like the coin should make as many people as mad as possible. And one of the important things then is to make sure it doesn't actually look like a coin. And that's why I was sort of thinking, like, could it be like a rhombus shape? Should it look like a star cube? A cube in the shape of the smoking twin towers. Remember the cube? Yeah, maybe it should be a cube. That's that's how I'm going to end it.

It should be a cube. OK, Milo, your vision for the coin. We have a lot to get to make it a quick vision. You know, like we can we can stick circular. We can we can stick classic. I think it should be I think it should be large, but not crazy. I think it should be like large enough that it could like be mounted behind the reception desk in the Federal Reserve,

like where they would normally have like a seal or something nice and steelable. Yeah, just have a big coin. I mean, like bolted down, I don't know, like behind a dinner plate size. Yeah, yeah, like, you know, like the Mona Lisa, like on display, but not very steelable. And then I think was stolen. The Mona Lisa was stolen. Look, shut up. It took to commemorate something.

And what it should obviously commemorate is Trump hearing about Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death. So it should fuck where he's got like finger behind his ear. Yeah, it should have him like eyes closed doing that pose with the two hands up thinking. And then on the other side in Latin, it should say, I didn't know that. I'm just hearing about that now for the first time. They just minted it. You're saying whatever you think about the coin was an amazing coin. You have to admit whatever your opinion was an amazing coin.

It was worth an amazing amount of money. I agree or not. I can also think for whatever reason. And this is going to become clear throughout the episode. The coin just makes me think of Donald Trump. It's just I can't stop thinking about it in his voice. Because the thing is, if you if you Google Donald Trump coin and look at the image results, you will get some some fantastic results.

And you see that Donald Trump is the most a human being has ever been in profile. And if you put the profile of Donald Trump on a coin, it's just it's perfect. You can't tell where the next starts so you don't really know where to end it. He's got this kind of weird, pursed, lipped expression that he does all the time. It's beautiful. And that has to be on the coin, which is my vision for the coin. But my vision for the coin is the unveiling of the coin. And this is something I worked out with friend of the show, Matty Lepchansky,

which is all right. Number one, right? The coin is going to be the thing that heals America if if and only if Donald Trump gets to deploy the coin, right? Because Republicans can heal their sort of Trump anti-Trump division. It's going to work up his base again. They're going to get to fix the problem without caving to Democrats. And then Donald Trump, he's comes down a big gold escalator and he's got the

coin and he's mugging to the journalists. He's hugging and kissing the coin. He's waving it around. He's talking, he said, look, it's me in profile. They say the coin, that's 10 years, but I think I look good. And then he comes down. There's a gigantic soda machine and everyone just is cheering and whooping as he's like, you know, he's like, am I going to spend it?

Am I going to put it in? Am I going to put it in? And that's how he deposits it into the Federal Reserve. And it's the best day of its fucking life. He just puts it into like a giant, a giant vending machine. And like six guys have to like haul out like a gigantic can of fresco. Okay, Lincoln, what is he on? The $10, the $20, I'm on a trillion dollars.

That makes me want a million times better. Yes, sir, Mr. President, but that's enough about the physicality, not enough of the physicality of the coin. We were coming back to this subject, but let's talk about the actual coin. And I wanted to what is this fucking coin? What is this thing? So I wanted to add before we jump off that the episode of odd lots on coin, which is has much less speculation of the physicality of the coin up front

with Rohan Gray, who's an academic on the subject, whose work I recommend was really, really informative, as well as I also say you should look at the work of Nathan Tankus, who's working the subject I recommend. So all of it was very helpful getting my head around the subject. So Joe, if you don't mind explaining, why are we in the situation where we're debating how big the trillion dollar coin should be? Yeah, it's actually pretty simple. We have this sort of very bizarre law in the United States

where the Congress, you know, they set appropriations, how much they're going to spend on military, all that stuff every year, every few months or whatever. But then separately, they have a separate vote from time to time about whether the government is legally allowed to take out the required financing in order to pay for the spending that they themselves have legally authorized. And this every couple of years, so the government runs into the situation in which it is hitting the maximum legally allowed amount of debt that it is allowed to take out.

And because politicians don't really like cutting spending, but because they like having the reputation of being sort of hard nosed, tough and sort of like realistic and hawkish, they usually make a stand here, make a bunch of speeches. But the risk is, of course, that if they don't raise the so-called debt ceiling, then you could have a situation which the government defaults on its debt and that by most people would agree that that is highly would be highly disastrous. So in 2011, which was the sort of the modern debt ceiling era

because that was the Tea Party era, it really started to look like the debt ceiling might not get raised in 2011. And a pseudonymous lawyer on the Internet named Carlos Mucha, I don't know if that's his real name, like discovered in coinage law that the Treasury has the discretion to create a coin specifically of platinum of any denomination that's allowed. And so the coinage law in the US is very specific. There's no limits on how many coins can be created, but it's very prescribed.

The penny is, you know, this, the nickel is this, the dime is this, the quarter is this. And then there's this one exception and it was added in the 90s. And we'll talk about its history because that's really important. It says, oh, and you can make a platinum coin out of any of any arbitrarily large denomination. Without going through Congress, right? Like this is the thing. It's like a purely executive power. That's right. That's right.

It's specifically a power allocated to the Treasury Secretary. And so that and that addendum to the law was added in the 90s. But prior to that law, there's a law that says the government can raise money via two ways, basically selling bonds and minting coins. And so if you want to have the spending authority, the legal authority to fulfill the spending that you're required, pretty simple solution, mint a trillion dollar coin, the Treasury can deposit the coin at the New York Fed, where it has something called the Treasury General Accounts.

And from this account, checks go out to contractors and numerous other people who are the recipients of government money, deposit the coin. Suddenly, there's a trillion dollars in there. And then the government spends as if there were no issues. And what's interesting is like, of course, it sounds absurd. The idea is like, oh, we're going to solve a problem by putting a trillion dollars on a coin. But I think as people like look into it more and more, it's very economically sound, it's legally sound, it's even constitutionally sound.

And so the arguments, it's this sort of beautiful story in which on its face, it's quite absurd. And yet the arguments against it are almost completely non-existent other than people think would be weird, which I get that it is weird. But if the if the choice is between weird and catastrophic default, I have a very hard time wrapping my head around the idea that catastrophic default is the weird thing is that the the Treasury Secretary has to wear cat is while he does it, which is also that's also put on people.

But I also love that this is basically the meme of like someone going, where did you get that money from? And then the other guy is like vaporizing him with an energy beam saying, I made it up. If the thing is, if you show Joe Biden enough memes of him with laser eyes doing something, he will do it. It's just a question of getting him in front of the right memes. That's true. So so basically what we have here is it's not just catastrophic as well for

the US to default on its debt. It's also illegal. It's unconstitutional. This is really important. This is really important. So in the 14th Amendment, subsection or section A, it's it's established that the Constitution, the debt shall not be questioned. You the government is compelled to pay its debt.

So I think there is a very situation with, you know, you could say the debt ceiling and says one thing, you can't take out any more debt. The budget says no, but you have to make this payment, etc. So, you know, as as many people have noted, the Treasury has been sent to contradictory laws, which is problematic. And so one possible solution that people say is, well, the government, the government could invoke the 14th Amendment and say, you know what? We are not going to abide by the debt ceiling because the Constitution

supersedes that. And that might work. That might be plausible, but then there would be numerous, be all kinds of like court battles and stuff like that. And so what the colliders say is, well, yes, there are contradictory laws and it is contradicted and it is a problem to violate the Constitution by not paying the debt. But the good news is we have a law that allows us, that allows the government

to maintain its constitutional obligation to pay its debt and avoid the contradiction of two laws. So why not operate within the law rather than going into uncharted territory of like invoking an amendment and hoping that that will. Well, additionally as well, right? If you do that, then, OK, well, convince Amy Coney Barrett. Go ahead. At some point, you will have to do that.

And look, like, you know, this is a point that comes up, you know, critics will say, oh, well, the Supreme Court might knock it down and say the coin is legal. And I suppose that's possible. But, you know, then the issue is like, well, if they're going, you know, if the Supreme Court, and this is my real view on this, if the Supreme Court is going to like the text that allows for the coin, it's not ambiguous. Philip Deal, who will probably talk about who is the Secretary of the Mint

in the mid or the head of the Mint in the mid 90s and said, yeah, of course, this law, he wrote the law, he says, of course, this law allows for the coin. Now, ultimately, if the Supreme Court, you know, could say whatever they want, and that could create a crisis. But the point is the plain text reading of the coin statute is pretty unambiguous. You heard of this guy, he's called Deal. You've got to do it, folks. It's a great deal.

So the thing is, right, this is what's happening, I think, as well, is that the sort of patchwork, semi-improvised nature of a lot of American institutions, such as the Supreme Court, was just kind of happened one day, right? It's all these things are running up against one another. And they're running up against one another because ultimately, like, you know, there is, let's say, in a time where there is a little bit less surplus to divide up and in a time where things are a little bit difficult,

there is, let's say, the bolts are straining on the system. One group of American sort of one block of American political players have realized that they are basically able to just hold this thing hostage at every turn from these extreme minoritarian positions. Yeah. Well, that's how I feel about it is like legality is a side. And, you know, a letter of the law and spirits of the law being separate things. This is about as legal as you're going to get as we've as we've been into, like. This is the key thing, which is that, right, like the impulse for the coin

comes from an impulse of let's keep the laws in harmony, because it's absolutely true. There are all kinds of different moving parts and it feels sort of like bolted together and it creates all kinds of problems. And we hear like deep problems in this country, like many countries seem to have these days, but it doesn't mean we should just sort of like give up. And so if there is a legal path out, why not use it? And like just in realistic terms, if the Republicans have been able to sort of use the debt ceiling since the nineties as a sort of cynical piece

of political leverage, doing a sort of cynical political end run around it. I mean, turnabout's fair play. You can complain about it as much as you like, and I'm sure they would. But just the sort of the moral valence of it, it doesn't it doesn't match up at all. Well, and, you know, people will say and people have said that it's like, yeah, well, yes, of course, that's that statute in the law that creates the coin exists, but that's clearly not what it was intended for. Everyone knows that it was really about creating draft laws.

Better skill issue, you know, well, that's true, too. But the other thing, the other problem with that logic is the debt ceiling wasn't designed in its current form. And this is something that I learned from Rohan's paper that you mentioned, which is that the debt ceiling was actually designed to enable the issue into more debt because prior to the law, every spending bill that was passed or every every appropriation had to have its own distinct financing. And so like, if like, OK, we're going to go make a railroad or a canal,

we have to like float a bond to do this. That's not that's not very workable. I imagine if Congress still had to do that, if they still had to pass, they're like, build this bridge bill. So yeah, so the coin was not to constrain debt. It was to say, you know, this is sort of a silly way of legalizing debt. Well, I should put it in one big bundle. And so if you want to go back to like, oh, we must adhere to like some very

pure motivation of the law, then the exact same argument could be used against the debt ceiling that people use against the court. So as I think that's it's it's worth emphasizing how much the as you say, the debt ceiling use this way is a procedural trick, much again, much just like like sort of the Republican approach to court appointments is a procedural trick. It's just in this case, it's a procedural trick that is a tungsten rod aimed directly at the dividing lines of Washington based institutions and global institutions of global financial

governance, the fault lines of which extend everywhere, including my house in a different country, which means I'm very, very concerned about it. I shouldn't have bought a house on that fault line. Debt defaults are bad. I mean, the Russian default of 1998 was a big deal for global markets and created this huge bear market. And that was, you know, this tiny fraction U.S. debt. Obviously, more recently, we go back to the Lehman disaster in 2008,

but defaults are bad. And I think there's good reason to think that a fault on U.S. treasuries would be extremely bad. We try to make very large coin, but due to Soviet manufacturing targets, actually, it was done by weight. So we made very small coin, but very dense. The Osmium coin. I mean, the thing is, I think the sort of the death of American empire

is like much heralded and I think often falsely, but a U.S. debt default would be one of the things you would look to for like it. It's over, you know, like at that point, that's a serious sort of like compromise on like the U.S. treasury, the U.S. dollar. And, you know, maybe instead of that, you know, you just you make the coin and you sell it by going, yeah, a shoe jimping hate it if you make the coin. Vladimir Putin would hate to see you make the coin. Yeah. And, you know, the other thing, too, is like coins are really normal.

Like that's the thing that I'm like, you know, like if they're like, oh, what if the Supreme Court strikes on the coin? And it's like governments have been issuing coins since like 600 B.C. Like there is net coinage as a form of money has never been controversial until suddenly now when we like, you know, and it could be used to a very it's very strange. It's like, what a coin? What? It's like coins have been all the time. It's one of the oldest.

It's probably the number one think of that people besides dollar bills, maybe of like what money looks like. It goes back to a thing we've said on the show a lot, which is that basically the Democrats are the Washington generals to the Republicans Harlem Globetrotters were like the Republicans constantly use all kinds of procedural tricks against the Democrats. And then whenever the Democrats are gifted a procedural trick to use, they're like, well, that would be unfair.

That wouldn't really be in the spirit of the game. Well, and it's worth saying as well, right? That that this is the absurdity of American political theater, you know, that the state at the center of the global imperial hegemony is potentially shutting down, like not pretend, I think it defaults unrealistic and unconstitutional, this stuff, but is toying with the idea of winding itself up at largely as a going concern, because like Greg Stooby and his friends and people like him have a knife at the throat of their institutions

through procedural tricks like this, it is genuinely a farce. I think about this in terms of the Supreme Court, right? And the idea that you could not get the trillion dollar coin through the Supreme Court, not because it would be like illegal or unconstitutional, but because on a sort of a partisan basis, they wouldn't let you. I think if you can't get this past them, you can't get anything past them. And that's sort of like they have effectively sort of removed your ability to govern and you have to do something sort of and overturn

Marbury Madison at that point. Like, yeah, the way I see it is like, if we have a Supreme Court that prefers default to coinage, what exactly are we preserving here? Like, you know, it's like, oh, we got it. We can't we can't violate these norms. And if we do, then the Supreme Court might overturn it. And it's like, OK, if we have these institutions from within that would like kind of like they're more comfortable with the default

than the existence of a coin, that's like pretty deep. That's that's not great. Well, I think it comes back to this idea of a really a really core sense of normalcy and seriousness that could, in fact, be the death of American empires sort of by accident. Because if you remember, I'm sorry, you remember this show, but people new to coinism might not know that in 2011, America's debt was downgraded. It shouldn't be possible to downgrade America's debt

based on the role of the dollar in the global financial system. Yeah, I mean, look, in the end, like the I don't think the US credit rating like matters, but like it wasn't entirely this weird, like self-inflicted wound to the extent that it did. But like this sort of like norms adherence. And like, look, I'm like a norms guy. I'm like, you know, whatever. I think it's good.

What are the most normative podcasting sunsay? I'm not I'm not I'm not a radical icon to podcast at Bloomberg about financial markets. We talk about the Fed and economics and monetary policy and all that stuff. But like the sort of like norms people in DC, it's like, look what they like, what have they got us because all of you know, they've been like, they're like, oh, that would violate the norms. And so in thanks to them, we've now had 12 years of these recurring

crisis where we occasionally threaten to like shoot ourselves in the foot or whatever it is. It's like, maybe we should try a different way. Maybe this sort of like adherence to like norms of like, what is the maximum denomination that we put on coins, strange norm to get worked out, what worked up over maybe like there are some costs to having avoided talking about this. Well, this is exactly why any time I think about a lot of, let's say North Atlantic or whatever, like court politics, this is basically court politics.

I always think of like the late Byzantine Empire of sort of scheming Unix performing rituals and like largely working in a self-referential set of schemes against and for one another. Well, the world that these rituals and schemes, this power they're supposed to take that they're supposed to try to govern just basically ticks over more or less without them, but mostly just has crises inflicted by them. And it's that this worship of stuff like norms to me does feel like Byzantine courtier shit where you are not, what you are not thinking about the impact

of what you're doing. You're thinking about adhering to the proper formal traditions. The Janissaries, they don't want to make the coin. They tell me I can't be on the coin, but we did it folks. We're going to do it. That's, that's, that's later than Byzantine. So please go on. No, I mean, it's, it's totally right.

And look, like I said, like, I don't even like, I don't even have a problem with like the premise of like, sometimes even you have to pay attention to rituals and norms and ways about doing things that aren't perfectly rational. Because like, that's kind of what modern society is. And it's like, if everyone tries to like do everything in like some sort of like perfectly rational way, I think all kinds of like things would like break down. So I don't even have like a problem with it. But what they sort of like, what blows my mind is to hear Democrats say

like, oh, they're Republicans, they're like, use language like hostage takers and stuff like, oh, the Republicans are like taking the economy hostage with these threats and stuff like that. It's pretty extreme rhetoric, pretty, you know, and yet it's like, OK, then what? But also we're going to completely unilaterally not do anything to protect the economy in light of this threat, which they've characterized as hostage taking. I find it very difficult to understand how to hold both things in the head. Here's an existential disaster.

It'd be worse than Lehman, you know, some complete like catastrophe, like a nuclear bomb going up. But also we can't do anything slight deviation to protect again. It's like they always say, you know, Americans always negotiate with terrorists. And when when you're in like a sort of a hostage taking situation, the first step of what you do is you give them everything they want and you just keep doing that forever. It's it's to me, it's like I think about this.

You know, the scene in Die Hard where John MacLean is like, now I have a machine gun, ho, ho, ho. It's like sure, he found he found the machine gun and it was like, here, I found your machine gun for you. Would you like it back? Can I please give you this gun? I don't want it. It would be unfair of me to use one, even though you all have them. If he uses the machine gun, he becomes Hans Gruber.

So let's talk a little bit about about whether or not the coin is likely to be minted. Yellen has said that she doesn't the Treasury Secretary. Janet Yellen has said she doesn't necessarily want to. And she said that it's a gimmick. But when asked about in the past, she said, never say never. And given that, I think if you if you do brinksmanship, which is which is what we've been seeing each time in order for brinksmanship to work, you generally have to get closer to the brink each time you do it,

which I think creates the possibilities of this of the bad outcome, say, happening by mistake or no one wants to do it. But everyone forgets to stop squabbling before they hit the brink and they go over. Yeah, I think it's a pretty legit concern. And I do think that there's like, they always say it, then they always get it done in the end. And look, if I were like betting, I would say probably they will just hike it eventually at the last second, because that is what happens. Like that's probably still like the modal outcome here.

But, you know, it really is interesting, Yellen, because she is not a fan of the coin is clear. Like I remember in twenty twenty one, she was asked about it to be very dismissive. And she's not like us. It's not a coinhead. But I think it's interesting. She's never and she's lately she's been asked about it. She was asked about it by the Wall Street Journal recently,

and she talked about how the Fed might not accept the coin, which I don't know. But it's interesting. She never said it's illegal, which she could say, right? Because if she said if someone has Yellen about the coin and she said, you talking about, of course, we can't just stamp a trillion dollars on a coin and have that be money. But I think most people would say, like, thank you, Janet, thank you for bringing some sanity to this conversation. Of course, that's not allowed.

She's never said that. She's never said that it's illegal. So I think, like, you know, I don't want to read too much into it. And I'm not a lawyer, but I think if she thought it was illegal, she would say that. And so it seems, I, you know, most likely we're not going to get a trillion dollar coin, but it seems to me that, like, there must be people who think, like, look, in a real pinch, we're about to go over the line. There's no prospect of this, like, getting past the debt ceiling hike. We need to do something.

A problem, maybe the Treasury does not want to be on record. It's having said it's illegal. So what I was thinking then is that the Treasury needs to have some platinum to hand, because you don't want that. You don't want to get to, like, 10 minutes left to raise the debt ceiling and you don't have any platinum. So this gets to, like, it's really fun, you know, like, I've also interviewed the aforementioned Philip Deal, who is the 35th Secretary of the U.S. Mint,

who wrote this. And what's fun talking about to him, there are many great aspects of Philip Deal. I mean, he's like this sort of, like, you know, like big talk in Texan. He was a Democrat, but there's sort of like a certain sort of a certain style of, like, Texas Democrat that doesn't exist anymore. His boss, when he was at the Mint, I think was Lloyd Benson, who was also a Texas Democrat. And, you know, like, he's like a, you talk to this guy.

He's not like some, like, you know, radical or anything like that. But he thinks, A, the trillion dollar coin is clearly legal. But also, like, he really knows a lot about Mint operations. So, like, all these questions, he's like, why? Like, do you need, can you put the word one trillion or kid, do you have to have the zeros? They're like, no, you're allowed to have one trillion. Like, he knows that because he ran them in.

There's also, it has to be a proof, a proof platinum coin. So that means it has a certain sheen to the coin, like a certain silveriness that comes from, like, extra polishing. So that is an element that we should have mentioned that when we were talking about design, that is the one design requirement is that it would have to be a very, like, sparkly, high quality platinum coin. This is perfect. It has to be shiny.

Like, you know, like the plant, the mint almost certainly has, I forget the word for, like, essentially the platinum discs that exist. Die, I want to say. Yeah, maybe it's just the die. Then I think you use that word. So the the Treasury has platinum die, iron, certainly. So the only thing that you would need to make sure is that some design exists so that they can, like, stamp it at the last second.

So you'd want to have that so that you're not at the last second, like, scrambling. Other than that, I think it could be done very. They need to get the perfect profile shot of Trump or, like, the picture of Joe Biden eating the ice cream or something. I'm really excited for the inevitable Supreme Court argument about whether the coin is shiny enough to be admissible. This is not a proof coin.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Yellen seems to be like she doesn't want to because she is repeating the usual Democrat line of this is a gimmick and therefore unserious. But it's not a gimmick if it solves your debt crisis. I mean, it's just like, would you rather would you rather have the entire just writing numbers on paper at the end of the day? Why not write them on a disk? Because specifically, right, this is also about solving solving the debt crisis

in basically kind of an accounting way. Well, this is really important, which is that, like, I mean, you nailed it by saying accounting. It's really not a debt problem. You as like, you know, US has never had a debt problem. We never have problems selling debt. It's an accounting issue and it's an accounting rules specific issue. So that's like the thing, you know, one of the issues obviously that comes up

is well, wouldn't a trillion dollar coin create inflation? She's an understandable intuition to have. You see big money, you think some Bobway, etc. But it's really not because it's not about injecting one trillion dollars worth of new spending power into the economy. The spending power was already authorized. This is like normal budget stuff. So it really is.

And it really is about there's a, you know, there is like, there is arguably, I guess, maybe you could say a flaw in the accounting rules that exist that govern our debt. And this is a solution to debt related accounting rules. But it really is, as you say, it's more about accounting specifically than it is about like, oh, paying off the debt. Because you hear people say, oh, what about like minting 32 trillion dollar coins and paying off the debt?

And it's like, yeah, but that's not the issue. The problem is not the size of the debt. The problem is like, we have no problem funding the debt or operating or recycling the debt. The problem is simply this accounting rule that exists as the sort of like tripwire within US law. And we need some other accounting rule to get around. Because this is, this comes back to, I think, the central point

of talking about the coin, right? And why anyone who says, oh, the coin is a gimmick. That's where you have to say, yes, it is. So is everything fucking else about this problem? Yeah, if you don't want to see clowns, why have you brought me to this circus? You know, like this is. Someone was like, someone I got into a fight on Twitter the other day.

I shouldn't have it. Someone was like, ah, I guess we have to hear about the coin again. And it's like, are you like more frustrated that you're talking about the coin or the people who have created the situation in which we're trying to solve the problem of the debt? And that's like to me, it's like, how can anyone find coin talk more annoying or more grating or more like, at least some people are trying to solve the problem. But doctor, I am the trillion dollar coin.

So speaking of people not trying to solve the problem, I grabbed a few quotes of American lawmakers talking about the coin. And remember, if you don't live in America, this affects you. Mitt Romney has said, I don't think there's a flip of a coin. Shut the fuck up to solve a problem of significance like this. This is our country we're talking about, to which he did. Basically, the objection is, ah, coin, that's not serious enough. That also metaphor doesn't work.

It's like flip of a switch. But you feel that you're flipping a coin, doesn't it? Flipping a coin is what you do. Yeah. Oh, if I, if I'm going to flip the coin heads, I deposited the fed tails and put it all on black. Yeah, we're minting a titanium eight ball and we're going to shake it. And we're going to find out whether or not we can authorize more debt. So Tom Tillis said, such a scheme would have, quote, implications.

It's not a magic wand. And if we do it, we're probably going to regret it. Again, you're talking about a fucking accounting rule. That's it. And finally, Elizabeth Warren said, I haven't heard any plausible case for that. The debt ceiling crisis, and this is the one I think is the most interesting quote, is manufactured by the Republicans. They aren't serious about the national debt.

If they were, they wouldn't have voted to increase it three times in Donald Trump was president. And that's the thing. It's true. Yes. The right in America, as well as in the UK, to a lesser extent, has realized that they can hold the country in the wider global financial system hostage when there's a democratic president. And but that doesn't mean it's unfair. What it means is that the entire system of global macroeconomic management centered in Washington has become irredeemably silly.

That's what has happened. Yeah, I mean, like, like, oh, what? It is true that when Republicans are in power, when they control the White House, suddenly the party stops talking about fiscal issues. Now, interestingly, it's also true. They kind of like, since 2011, you know, when the Tea Party wave come in, like, basically, the party actually has moved on even like from fiscal issues. It's just not what it was 10 years ago, in part.

Like, you know, the like austerity politics is like just not in anymore. Oh, it is in the UK. Oh, yeah. But what Elizabeth Warren is identifying is like clearly true. Like, everyone knows it's true, which is that the party, you know, talks about the debt one way when the White when they control the White House another way. But like, but I don't think I don't think that absolves anything. Or like, OK, so you accuse the Republican Party of being hypocrites.

Fine. Great. What does that do? How does that? Like, if you still think there is this existential risk out there, like, you know, OK, so you call the other party hypocrites politics. Great. But like, that does not absolve you. Oh, one does the White House. It's like, yes, it's like, think about the logic. It's like, yes, we let, you know, we decided to let the country violate the Constitution, we did that.

It caused a financial crisis and it was worse than Lehman, etc. But what it really showed was that the party was hypocrites. It's like, I'm sorry, like, I actually think preventing that disaster scenario should be like a higher calling than just like getting a chance to like score points about, like, you know, your point. It's why I've increasingly, I think that the actual the best metaphor here is for these these two positions is as like like a Laurel and Hardy, right? Like, who's on first, you know,

and in order you need someone earnestly trying to figure out the names of the baseball players that are on the various bases, in order for the sketch to work, in order for the circus clown, the circus sketch that is American politics to work, you need the you need the straight man and that they are in the double act together. The conceit of the sketch is that the debt ceiling matters and should be somehow respected, whether by raising it or whether by cutting so you come under it.

No, I think there's a real point and people will point this out. They say like, Oh, well, the Democrats like debt ceiling politics as well, because the Republicans, we all, you know, they from time to time threatened to not raise it. And the Democrats right now, especially they look at it, it's like, we just came off like a really good midterm elections. Let's why don't we let the Republicans, you know, keep talking about what they want to cut and unpopular things like cutting Social Security?

Like, please, like let the Freedom Caucus have the microphone for the next six months. And I get that political impulse. Then I do think that's how the Democrats see it. My perspective is like, OK, like, generally, like, then I just think, like, it should be, you know, as it coming out from the member of the media, like, OK, if the Democrats like like the existing debt ceiling politics as it is, that's fine. I get that. But then I think the media should be apply more scrutiny to the Democratic Party

and not about like, it's two sides playing. It's two, it's both sides playing this game because the Democrats do have options that they are choosing not to take. And if they like it for political reasons, then I don't know, that's maybe like, that's why ultimately, right, by treating it seriously, they're making it real. You have to meet match gimmick for gimmick, man. Yes, that's right. That's right. Yeah, like I thought about this exactly the same way, which is like,

this is purely a crisis of public perception. If Biden said tomorrow, I was like, you know what, it's fine. Here's what here's a way that this could be solved. Biden could come out and say, you know what, the Republicans, they don't want to add more debt to the national debt, that's fine. That's their prerogative. Government, including our own, have a long history of minting money as an alternative to debt financing.

We could just switch to that. We have no problem. It'd be over. We wouldn't be the end of the story. We'd be done by like this afternoon. And they would just say it like that. And people would like, it'll be weird for a couple of days and then you move on. But like, so it's an entirely a crisis of our own perception for like denying the existence of alternatives and ways to get out.

Sounds like you need some serious journalists applying scrutiny to this. Maybe import some from the UK. Maybe we need Peston and Coonsburg over there to really hold power to account in the United States. You know, people with strong analytical mind. Peston, Peston would lose his shit over a trillion dollar coin. Those friends would just be like, they'd woke. Yeah. Oh my God.

Yeah. I wonder it has, has that debate happened? Like, is, is, is, is, is the treasury secretary about the prospect of the trillion dollar coin and she said that she's not going to do it. But what choice does she have? That's Peston. Thank you. First, a trillion dollar coin, next trillion genders. Yeah. I can see the agenda right here.

This is this. Look, we were saying, please take some British journalists off this island and have them investigate it. You'll find out the coins gender by the next day. I swear to God. The, the, the flight of like British journalists, the, the sort of philosophy ship that we put all of our journalists on to get them to America. It's like fucking con at, you know, they're all locked in separate

compartments and like the marshal is going down the thing. Like that's Laura Koonsburg, you know, you heard about some of the shit she did. Fuck that. It's messed up, gives me nightmares. So I think assuming that no British journalists are going to unfortunately leave this country to go and try and apply their significant analytical skills to the question of the coin. Will Joe Biden nationalize sausages?

Will he indeed? This goes back, I think, right to the idea of the issue at hand, which is there's a sociologist who I like who wrote in the fifties about nuclear deterrence called C right Mills. And Mills had this theory, a theory I've talked about on this show before of crackpot realism, his idea of, you know, we need more nuclear bombs to make us more safe from nuclear annihilation. The idea that we can somehow have fewer nuclear bombs is, is a fantasy, right?

And ultimately it's because there is, I think, the reason that so many people are against the A very cool, B very simple, C matching gimmick for gimmick idea of just minting a coin to solve the manufactured pretend problem is that they love, is that there is a fetish for complexity among the Byzantine Unix who are in charge of actually making the decisions that affect us. And ultimately, and that they mean that what that means is if they are looking at a simple solution, a simple legal guaranteed to work effective solution

right in the face and dismissing it because it feels a bit silly, because it feels a bit childish, because what coins, it doesn't make them feel good about their job, a coin's not big money, a coin's little money. You use a coin at the convenience store. You don't use a coin to fund something other than the purchase of a candy bar. And I think ultimately like this is a tendency that comes up at the top level of American and British and European and North Atlantic generally politics again and again and again and again.

And ultimately, I think it lies under the fact that these people are purely looking at a map and have no conception of the territory. It is just the performance of ritual and that something like the US funding its existing spending obligations becomes something more like a ritual or a right than an actual functional thing that needs to happen out there in the world of people and jobs and things and buildings and stuff. It sort of goes back a bit to what we were saying on last week's episode about the tendency in British politics where like periodically you'll have

something come up, which is like a slightly different way of doing things. Then you'll have a bunch of people who've done a load of research standing up and going like, well, here are all of the well research and statistically analyzed reasons why this would be a good way forward. And then someone stands up and goes, no less Pollux. And that's basically what's happening with the coin. It's like, here is a simple solution to this stupid problem that has been created and, you know, it works.

There's no reason really not to do it. And then people are just going, nice coins, Pollux. Yeah, going too small. Yeah, no, it is. Because again, like, you know, those quotes that you read about politicians dismissing the client, like it's they're not compelling. You use like that's the beauty of the coin from a sort of like pedagogical or journalistic standpoint is like in the people, the coin critics,

of course, have this sort of like deep constitutional loathing for it. But when you actually get them to articulate what's wrong about it, they just like think they're like sputtering. They don't really have what's wrong about it is that they don't. They just don't like it. And they can't say why they just don't like it. It just seems silly. No, that really is.

They just don't like it. No, right. This just don't like it. How on earth have you been given an opportunity to avert a global financial catastrophe and you just what it makes you feel silly? Fuck off. Sorry for listeners. Joe's not actually wearing headphones. I'm sorry to his colleagues.

So so so the issue, yeah, I'm in a room that's not there's no I did get out of a newsroom. So is this really just like a branding issue in that case? Like, do we need to like go away from the idea of the coin and in fact, replace it with something like it's serious, for example, a gun. I work like it's like a big gun. Well, look, I would say the branding question is actually pretty interesting because there are a few other potentially legal alternatives that aren't default and that aren't like premium ones.

Some people have talking talked about issuing consoles, which are a type of bond that just pays in forever and have no face value. And the claim is that since the debt ceiling applies to the amount of face value of the thing, that that wouldn't count against it. There's another idea called high coupon bonds in which the bond would pay $200 upon maturity, but only sells for 100. So you can that's also gimmicks. No, it is. It's a it's definitely gimmicks.

But what's interesting? No, this is really important. There are people who are like, I don't like the coin, but I like these other ideas. And I do think it's like the types who are into them are essentially the complexity appreciators. And ideologically, people who still like like some, you know, it involves the Fed and there's still be a treasury bond, there would still be a bond auction, and you'd still have Wall Street dealers.

Like you would maintain all these steps. You would, you know, because it's gimmicky to just drive the coin over in an armored truck from the Mint to the New York Fed or a helicopter over. But like it's it's a little bit more serious. It's a little bit more like realistic to have this. We're going to like create a new bond auction schedule. And then we're going to involve the Wall Street banks, who then have to participate in the auction and sell it to their clients.

Like I think there are a lot of people for whom those options that seemingly have all these extra hoops and steps are just sort of like deeply more comfortable. They're all ignoring the fact of what this could do for American culture, because as we know, Michael Mann is in the process of riding heat too. And what better plot for heat to than the process of the trillion dollar coin being transported from the Mint to the Fed and all of the things that could go wrong in that process.

Just imagine all of the films in the cinematic coin averse, you know, like we could we could do every major heist movie remade for a world in which there's the coin. Your money's insured by the federal government. We're here for the federal government's money. Wait. So and so I want to sort of move on here a little bit, right, which is how did we get to the point where it is legal for the Fed to to the Mint to just mint a coin.

And what I love is that and you sort of alluded to this a little bit earlier, Joe, it was sort of it was not by accident in terms of Philip Deal, but it's legislative sponsor did it a bit by accident, right? It will might castle. So there's actually you know what the funny thing is, like even outside the trillion dollar coin, there's like some really interest, like again, listening and talking to deal is like how like a lot about how like DC like really works.

And I think like, you know, the sort of like power of like a sort of mid-level secretary to actually like change the world. And it's like he was like really interested, like he tells the story of how he saw an opportunity to sell more collectibles, collectible coins to the Japanese market specifically Japan. He's like, what could we do? Like sell Japanese coins. He's a collectible coin guy. And he was like nice debt.

Nice debt ceiling at the commemorative coin. Can you use this coin to pay for petrol? That's what I want to know. Oh, so he's like a real like sort of like entrepreneurial like pro business sort of type of like, how could the coin, how can the Mint make more money? We need to expand and more markets. We need to grow the market share of the money is a very funny question because it feels like a symbol answer.

Yeah, no, it's like he got this thing passed and he went at Mike Castle. I forget what committee he, you know, Mike Castle is a Republican from Delaware and Philip DeO like worked him. He like became, you know, he like, he like worked both sides of the hill. Like again, DeO is not like some radical. He like worked with Republicans, worked with some Democrats, etc. And he like, you know, like said, look, look, if we, if you gave us more flexibility on Platinum Coinage, the Mint could sell more coins, have more revenue

and then lower than national debt because the Mint remits its profit to the Treasury at the end of every year. And so like, you know, Mike Castle, a Republican from Delaware, went along with it. And again, you know, like, look, the original DeO will say the original goal is like because he was talking to Japanese collectors, like, where can the Mint expand market share? But the impulse was fiscal. The impulse was how can the Mint remit more money, seniorage revenue,

the gap between the face value of the coin versus this sort of metallic content? How can it remit more monetary value back to the Treasury? So the Treasury takes on less debt. He's like, this is a way to do it. Give us more power over Platinum Coinage. And he got it done. You know, the other thing, DeO is an amazing American character because like he was like in addition to this, like he was like talking in the mid 90s about digital

currency and like the need potentially for like thinking about what is the Mint's role going to be in a world of digital money, etc. So like just a true like a great, a truly great American character who happened to also be a visionary. And that's the out of the deal. I mean, I mean, just just to think about just to think about like Mike Castle basically being the Trojan horse, like letting the Trojan horse of this commemorative coin legislation through that accidentally creates the ability

of the Mint to make a commemorative coin that doesn't end run around the Republicans procedural trick to hold Democratic presidents to it. So like Ransom is hilarious. Except that all of the Democrats are getting out of the Trojan horse going like, well, it would be unfair to kill the Trojans while they're asleep. We're in the horse. We're in here just to let you know. So I actually have an article from the Washington Post in 2013.

I commend non being like, no, using a horse to get in there would be silly. Come on, we've been fighting a proper war here for 10 whole years. And we're not going to solve it with a stupid fucking hollow horse. OK, so we're just going to drop the horse again. No, well, actually, I think Menelaus said he's not opposed to the horse. The horse wouldn't be illegal, he said, causing to the according to the laws of the Danons.

So so we have that. Mike Castle in 1995 says his biggest accomplishment was the creation of the 50 state quarter quarter program. Again, after they mint the coin, his second biggest accomplishment will have been the 50 state quarter program, which also is a field of deal creation. Like that was that was deal's vision. Because again, he's like, how can we get more revenue?

And that was a massive, massive revenue success because you had all these collectors who wanted to collect all 50 and they sort of rolled it out in a smart way. So like deal like again, like just like this like visionary at every turn, like that was his brain. So he says, but he also drafted a bill, the commemorative coin authorization and reform act of 1995 that included the following provision with the following wording, notwithstanding any other provision provision of law, the secretary of the treasury may mint and issue platinum coins in such quantity

in such variety as the secretary determines to be appropriate. Now, the logic Castle told the reporter at the time was, as you say, to enable the treasury to put out different collectible platinum coins. That doesn't matter. It's drawn to broadly goes up to anything. You could do a hundred trillion dollar coin if you wanted. Quote, the investment community wanted flexibility to make fractional coins. People couldn't afford the and again,

thinking that we're talking in terms of billions and trillions now, the next number I'm going to say should be very funny. People couldn't afford the initial $600 investment. So they wanted the flexibility to put in smaller coinage so that people could then collect them my half a cent platinum coin. You know, yeah, that's it was intended for that. And now is just turned into like basically America's more or less gigantic half a cent coin last with Trump's face on it.

But like, but, but again, and this is a point that Rowan makes, which is true. So people say like, well, clearly this was just about like coins for coin collectors, but the point was to remit to make more profits for the mint and remit it to the treasury. And so by seeing from one angle, the goal was not to do the platinum coin up operation as the end run, but seen from another angle. If the goal is how can we use the mint as a way to lessen the treasury's debt burden that is precisely the goal of what the of the.

So in the coin head, oh, we're all we are very much. Oh, finally, you know what, we're coin pilled. We are, I am finally into a coin. It's just this one maxing. I love the coin. I just like thinking about like thinking about what the coin would commemorate. You know, I mean, I personally, I'm going back to the idea. The best idea is January 6th coin.

It should be January 8th January 6th coin. But it's the Ben Garrison cartoon with like the guy tearing open the. Yes, they just let Garrison do the coin. It's too good. No, I love the idea of the commemorative coin commemorating the inauguration of America, a saved and reunited country at the head of its third great century. Commemorate the minting of the coin, the moment where it all turned around. An engraving of this is the first design I like on one side is a is a photo of

Philip deal and on the other side is a miniature version of the coin itself. That's engraved because that goes all the way down. I like it on High Valley Treasury bills, which they sort of largely stopped using in the thirties, they put some really obscure shit. Salmon P Chase, the first Treasury secretary is on a few of these. So I think you need salmon salmon, salmon P Chase. You need to reach back into history and go to like, I think it's time. I think it's time that Millard Fillmore was on a coin.

I think it's time that William McKinley was on a coin. It's time James Garfield was on a coin. Rather for days, I can't deal with the name Millard Fillmore. I think so hot on the heels of salmon P Chase. So these are all made up. What's the P stand for in salmon P Chase? Salmon Portland Chase. And so like, I think that salmon Pacific Chase,

I think this is also one of the one of the things I think it's worth sort of winding down on, right? Which is I think that this is some people say, you know, that there's a criticism of the coin, which is that it's basically MMT and that if you're a left-winger. It is fine, sure, whatever. Do you want to do incrementalism and have a United States that sort of functions in the world economy or not? You know, what I was going to say is that I think the important thing to remember

is that minting the coin isn't about trying to solve a problem in the real economy that isn't generated by accounting rules. You know, you mentioned MMT and I'll just say like, it is certainly true that the coin has many adherents among the MMT community, but there's nothing inherently MMT about it. All I would say is people who sort of like are into MMT intuitively get right away why it's not problematic. And so I think that's mainly the thing.

But it's like, you know, it's not about a change in economic policy. It's not about, oh, we're going to spend more money to fix this. It's not about, it doesn't even, you know, people talk about one of the bizarre things like, oh, this is going to jeopardize Fed independence, but the Fed could still raise rates if you want. Nothing about the coin prevents the Fed from like raising rates. In fact, if for some reason, you know, so the Fed would then have this coin worth $1 trillion on its balance sheet, it wouldn't affect the real economy.

If for some reason the Fed was still uncomfortable with that, it could sell a trillion dollars worth of its bond holdings into the market. Nothing about the active minting and depositing the coin is an imposition on Fed policy in the slightest. Any policy flexibility that the Fed has today, the Fed would still have with a billion with a trillion dollar coin in one of its faults. So like it does. So while it is true that like many of the M.M.T.

people like, yeah, of course, the coin makes sense. That's a good solution. That's silly. It is not really a fundamental change in the nature of American macro man. Mostly I just want to think about the security of, you know, transporting it. I want to see that convoy. I want to see that motorcade. I want to see them put it in the back of like a Bradley or something.

Yeah, but they should do it. Yeah. You know, and they should make it big. Like that's the one reason why it should be big is, you know, like Rowan has said this, I like after the trillion dollars worth of spending power has been exhausted, put it in a museum or something. And I'm not even that worried about the theft because like you can't spend it. No, right? Like you can't spend it.

Running into Target, like, oh, what can I get? Anyone break it? But on the other hand, like imagine being the person who stole the trillion dollar coin, like that lives with you for I think what you need to do, what you need to do is you need to mint what you need to tell people you're going to mint it at like it's sort of a 20 foot diameter, right? And then you put that on the back of the truck with like a battalion of Marines or whatever, and you drive this sort of like base metal 20 foot coin under a sheet

around and then you just have Joe Biden walk into the Fed with like the, you know, dime sized trillion dollar coin he actually made just in his pocket and be like, yeah, something nice. But that's one place. Joe Biden losing the one trillion dollar coin is the funniest possible outcome. Oh, it's got to be around here somewhere. So look, what will the coin not do? The coin won't reduce America's credit worthiness.

The coin won't cause a global economic catastrophe. It won't add more spending. So it won't be like inflationary. But what the coin will do is the coin will heal America. The coin will be awesome. Give Donald Trump his like perfect make a wish lifetime moment. Exactly. It will heal America from top to bottom. And, you know, it's it will it will be a fun gimmick.

And you know what? We'll all get to see the coin. We'll get to think more about the coin. We'll probably do another episode about the coin if they make it. It would be really funny. It would be funny if they didn't show it to us. It's like, trust us, we deposited this coin and the Fed is like, yeah, they did. Like, imagine the conspiracy theories.

Imagine the conspiracy theories that they never actually showed anyone the coin. So you're saying it's kind of like it's a coin that doesn't have to exist. Like a kind of like a Wittgenstein coin. None of us know it exists. We can't see it. We all have our own understanding. And then you can clip and sign and

board and ruin it for us by like foyering the design of the coin. And we end up seeing like a sort of 2D drawing of it. And it's like boring. Yeah. And I've been curious about whether the any current designs that may have been made in 2011 or 2013. But as far as I know, none have been. Yeah. You know, you know, the coin, actually, they never really made that. They the footage of them making the coin, they faked that on the moon.

Yeah. So I think that's about all the time we've got left for today. But Joe, what a delight to talk to you again. And if you are out there and enjoy the financey chat on this show, you will probably like odd lots. So do check that out. And also the Joe Rogan experience has a lot of great coin stuff on there. They should put on the coin.

That's exactly it with him doing the big one about a chimp. Yeah. Yeah. Ripping someone's face up. Yeah. No. So we have a live show in Berlin on March 11. Tickets are now available. They are come to that. It's going to be great. Still available at the time that you hear this because they are.

We have to run off the show ourselves. What? Which is a great money making opportunity, but also a logistical problem. Can we get we should talk about how we're going to do that? The Cornish payday guys are going to help. I'm going to buy those sort of arm gutters that Old West bartenders wear and I'm going to sort it myself. Hey, you know what? Come buy a drink with the coin.

We probably can't give you change. But you don't have a sasperilla with Alice. Yeah. Also, if you are in London, England on February 20th, keep your calendar free that night. Hmm. There may be doing the transpire. I say there might be a live show of a certain podcast. There might be a certain live show. It might be about a book about Liz Truss.

Well, who would we possibly might involve a famous British comedian known for his reading of MP's book? Who would we possibly subject the Liz Truss book? I can't think of any problems. I can't stir. Obviously. Exactly. That's why I'm going to be there. Come on down. James A. Caster is legal.

I'm running the bar. All right. All right. James A. Caster is wearing the allga, too easy, mate. No worries. Time to time to let Joe get back to his day and for us to get back to our evening. Joe, thanks a lot again. Thank you. And bye, everybody. Bye bye.