Ryan Cooper’s Jon Stewart Faceplants on #MintTheCoin:
Let’s review. The Republican House has passed a budget legally obliging the executive to spend a certain amount, but they are threatening to withhold borrowing authority to pay for the spending they themselves passed into law unless they get what they want. Since this would probably lead to the government missing an interest payment and thus threatening the status of US Treasury securities, the bedrock of the entire financial system, Republicans are literally taking the world economy hostage to extract unrelated policy concessions. The platinum coin option is an emergency proposal to use the government’s seigniorage power to continue to fund the government’s operations without issuing additional debt.
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Paul Krugman’s Lazy Jon Stewart:
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Stewart seems weirdly unaware that there’s more to fiscal policy than balancing the budget. But in this case he also seems unaware that the president can’t just decide unilaterally to spend 40 percent less; he’s constitutionally obliged to spend what the law tells him to spend. True, he’s also constitutionally prohibited from borrowing more if Congress says he can’t — which is a contradiction. But that’s the whole point of the discussion.
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It is a great lesson for us all. After all stupidity is always self-inflicted.
And no-one is immune.
And, NO, no, Jon Stewart is not a progressive, he is certainly a Very Serious People wanna be, aka a centrist. I still like him, nevertheless.
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Jon Stewart response …
Sad.
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