Treasury Rules Out Platinum Coin

Dreams of a platinum coin are dead. In a statement to Ezra Klein of The Washington Post, a Treasury Department spokesperson said "neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit." Translation: the Treasury won't mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin to get around the debt ceiling and if they did, the Federal Reserve wouldn't accept it, making it unusable for the purpose of paying the government's bills. The idea had been endorsed by some journalists, New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, and even a few congressmen. Experts expect the U.S. to hit the statutory debt ceiling of $16.394 trillion between Feb. 15 and March 1.