January 9, 2013

Hope and change... into a clown costume.

Paul Krugman responds to the pushback he's received on "the trillion-dollar-coin thing":
There seem to be two kinds of objections. One is that it would be undignified. Here’s how to think about that....
The professor is about to teach us how to think. Get ready!
... we have a situation in which a terrorist may be about to walk into a crowded room and threaten to blow up a bomb he’s holding. 
Okay. A hypothetical. I'm up for hypotheticals. And it's an analogy, because the trillion-dollar-coin thing isn't promoted as a solution to terrorism. But terrorism is something that you can picture quite concretely and you understand it as very real and scary — unlike the debt ceiling problem which is awfully abstract. (Even to say "ceiling" is to resort to metaphor.)

So, anyway:
It turns out, however, that the Secret Service has figured out a way to disarm this maniac — a way that for some reason will require that the Secretary of the Treasury briefly wear a clown suit. (My fictional plotting skills have let me down, but there has to be some way to work this in). 
In this hypothetical, you have to accept that the Secret Service has found "a way." It will work. The professor is telling you how to think, so you're going off track if you want an explanation for why that would work or if you — much more likely — would be thinking what the hell is going on in this country when the people in charge are figuring out solutions involving clown suits and believing that clown-suit solutions work? Krugman reveals that he knows his hypothetical is horribly flawed, and he tries to paper it over by confessing to second-rate "plotting skills." There has to be some way to work this it. The professor is teaching us how to think — use this analogy — but he can't piece together the hypothetical. How's that supposed to help us think?

He continues:
And the response of the nervous Nellies is, “My god, we can’t dress the secretary up as a clown!” Even when it will make him a hero who saves the day?
Wait. The normal people who go with the working theory that the government has gone mad are "nervous Nellies"? Yes, because Krugman's hypothetical locks it in that the solution works. So the people aren't supposed to be thinking that sounds crazy. It's posited that they know it will work, so all they can realistically be concerned with is that the secretary will look undignified dressed like a clown.

Krugman turns to the second objection, as if it's unconnected to the first one:
The other objection is the apparently primordial fear that mocking the monetary gods will bring terrible retribution.
Why weren't the people who say it looks crazy credited with having some fear that it wouldn't work? Because in the clown-suit hypothetical it was posited that it would work? These "nervous Nellies" were mocked in Part I of Krugman's krushing of all adversaries. In Part II, we see troglodytes who imagine a "god" who will punish us for doing something wrong.
What the hysterics see is a terrible, outrageous attempt to pay the government’s bills out of thin air. This is utterly wrong, and in fact is wrong on two levels.

The first level is that in practice minting the coin would be nothing but an accounting fiction, enabling the government to continue doing exactly what it would have done if the debt limit were raised....
So it's a trick, but it's not that different from other tricks. It's just weirder looking. Like a clown suit. Which gets back to the point I made when I criticized Krugman a couple days ago:
It's strange that it's come to this, but I don't believe the President of the United States would choose to do something that will strike the people as so bizarre, even if he feels capable of articulating the legal theory with a straight face. The President must maintain the people's trust and confidence. He must be comprehensible as normal, sound, and sane to ordinary folks.
Krugman's response to these ordinary folks — the people upon whom the President's power depends — is: They're hysterical and ill-informed. Well, how did this President — how does any President — get elected in the first place? It was by generating confidence. He's a con man. Let's say the management of the national debt has been a lot of trickery for a long, long time. What then does it matter if we do something that is quite obviously a trick, that everyone will see as a trick?

Does the trick work if the magician points to the hand that's doing the sleight?

241 comments:

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Rabel said...

The law in question 31 USC § 5112 is clearly unconstitutional as it also requires that "United States coins shall have the inscription “In God We Trust”."

Seeing Red said...

You're mistaking easiest for the best.

Again, have you ever been in debt?

If so, did you pay or are you payihng it off?

How do you do this?

If not, what did you do to stay out of debt?


Via Insty:

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal government posted a $293 billion deficit in the first fiscal quarter of 2013, setting the Obama administration up for a record fifth-year of trillion dollar deficits. But while the fiscal condition of the Democratically controlled federal government is still atrocious, Republican controlled states are now swimming in surpluses....

AllenS said...

Wait a minute. Raising the debt limit is the best solution to repaying the debt? You can't be serious. OK, I get it now, you're just having fun with the wingers. Got it. When you can't argue in good faith, make a funny.

Seeing Red said...

Or he's just another progressive hypocrite, do as I say, not as I do.

garage mahal said...

It means a lot of the other things the government wants to spend money on don't get funded, of course

Not sure that would be legal: unfunding something that is legally appropriated by congress.

Which brings up the point of not whether it's legal to mint the coin, but whether it's legal not to mint the coin if there are no other options. For instance: Obama can't simply decide who gets SS checks, and when.

garage mahal said...

Via Insty:

You aren't going to find any answers there.

AllenS said...

Maybe Obama can't decide who gets SS checks, but the government has control over how much they get. I've been getting SS checks since I turned 62 in 2008, and for 2 or 3 years, there was no COLA. That's one way of slowing that part of the debt down. You don't have to pick winners or losers, and you can make it harder to get SS disability.

Seeing Red said...

What? Congress passes mandates all the time that are unfunded.

Seeing Red said...

Why are there no other options?

Revenant said...

Not sure that would be legal: unfunding something that is legally appropriated by congress.

He's not unfunding it. He's got no money to spend on it. That's quite the difference.

If he *had*, say, a billion dollars for the Department of Departmental Departmentalization, and Congress had set the budget for the DDD at $1 billion, and he chose not to spend it -- that would be illegal. But when Congress says "you must spend money on the DDD and no, we're not giving you any", Congress may be ignored. Congress used to try pulling the same unfunded mandate trick on the states and got slapped down.

The President is Constitutionally obligated to pay US debts. He is not obligated to make any other expenditure of money unless Congress actually provides him with a legal means of obtaining the money to spend.

Think about it. Under your logic, Congress could pass a law ordering Obama to raise the dead and then impeach him for failing to do so. In reality it is generally recognized that laws which cannot be obeyed do not have to be obeyed.

Which brings up the point of not whether it's legal to mint the coin, but whether it's legal not to mint the coin if there are no other options.

The question is moot; there are plenty of other options.

garage mahal said...

I'm going to get serious about my spending by stop paying my mortgage!

Seeing Red said...

You wouldn't be the 1st.

garage mahal said...

@Revenant
You may be right, I'm not sure. It might be helpful to give a real world scenario/example.

Seeing Red said...

What's the issue with not paying one's mortgage?

The US is now sub-prime mortgages, giving money to people who can't afford it.

You're OK with this, you have been for a long time.

Big Bird needs his seed provided by Julia's daddy. Can't get it from his merchandising in over 100 countries.....

AllenS said...

I have a better idea, garage, stop paying your property taxes. Deal directly with the government. See how that works out.

Chip S. said...

garage mahal said...
I'm going to get serious about my spending by stop paying my mortgage!

Oh, good. You're back to spouting nonsense.

All's right w/ the Althouse universe.

jr565 said...

What if repubs tie raising the debt ceiling to demands that the dems,I don't know, submit an actual budget FOR THE FIRST TIME IN FOUR YEARS?

Seeing Red said...

So, GM, what is the US mortgage in the greater scheme of things?

garage mahal said...

@Chip
That was obvious snark.

Chip S. said...

I know, garage. It's just that I've had a hard time coming to terms w/ you making more sense than my fellow Alt-cons today.

But there are libs who think that raising the debt limit has something to do w/ "full faith and credit" of bonds, when in fact it has to do w/ making SS payments, etc. You seemed to be in that camp.

Seeing Red said...

Government Motors bondholders got stiffed, 100++ years of bankruptcy law overturned, non-union pensions got stiffed, what's a few more million or billion?

Julia needs her free pills to cure her acne.

Seeing Red said...

Let Congress, Obama & Biden get stiffed to make payroll.

Revenant said...

You may be right, I'm not sure. It might be helpful to give a real world scenario/example.

One example of the executive branch refusing to spend money on expenditures required by Congress is the US embassy in Israel. Clinton, Bush and Obama have all refused to spend the money appropriated by Congress for moving our embassy to the capital in Jerusalem.

Revenant said...

I'm going to get serious about my spending by stop paying my mortgage!

Well, how about a thought experiment? Say your monthly mortgage is $1700. Which is going to get you in more trouble -- not paying it, or printing up a $1700 bill with your face on it and mailing that in instead? :)

garage mahal said...

Which is going to get you in more trouble -- not paying it, or printing up a $1700 bill with your face on it and mailing that in instead? :)

If I can legally print a $1700 bill with my face on it and send it in as payment I would say that would get me in less trouble.

bagoh20 said...

"If I can legally print a $1700 bill with my face on it and send it in as payment I would say that would get me in less trouble."

Yes, then try to get someone to loan you more money.

bagoh20 said...

That's where we are.

bagoh20 said...

I have no doubt the lawyers will find some way to legally pretend there is no cost to this all, but there is, and we know who's back it will be laid upon. That makes us immoral, and disgustingly incompetent stewards to our own people, our culture, our legacy. We simply suck, and we all know it. Politics is making it seem like some other battle is at hand, but it is really just robbing our kids piggy bank for another drink after we have more than enough.

jr565 said...

Republicans actually have some bargaining they can do on the debt ceiling.

"
Tuesday marks the 1,350th day since the Senate passed a budget. The law requires Congress to pass a budget every year, on the grounds that Americans deserve to know how the government plans to spend the trillions of taxpayer dollars it collects, along with dollars it borrows at the taxpayers' expense. But Majority Leader Harry Reid, who last allowed a budget through the Senate in April 2009, has ignored the law since then.

There's no mystery why. The budget passed by large Democratic majorities in the first months of the Obama administration had hugely elevated levels of spending in it. By not passing a new spending plan since, Reid has in effect made those levels the new budgetary baseline. Congress has kept the government going with continuing resolutions based on the last budget signed into law.

[...]

"I think it should be a firm principle that we should not raise the debt ceiling until we have a plan on how the new borrowed money will be spent," Sessions told me Monday in a phone conversation from his home in Alabama. "If the government wants to borrow money so it can spend more, then the government ought to tell the Congress and the American people how they will spend it."

There are no specific proposals yet, but under this scenario Republicans would insist on a debt ceiling agreement that includes (among other things) a requirement that Congress pass a budget by a specific date. If that doesn't happen, there would be some sort of enforcement mechanism, perhaps an arrangement whereby the debt ceiling was lowered, or one in which Congress would have to muster a supermajority to raise it again."


Good idea. And repubs have the law on their side. The senate dems are required by law to pass a budget. Not having proposed a new one lets them get away with spending atrocious amounts of money then saying that we need to raise the limit to match the profligate spending.

If Obama or the dems refuse then it's a question of the dems not going along with federal law and clearly not taking the idea of reigning in govt seriously.



Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/01/gop_may_use_debt_limit_bill_to_force_senate_dems_to_pass_a_budget.html#ixzz2HWLHfX9x

Revenant said...

If I can legally print a $1700 bill with my face on it and send it in as payment I would say that would get me in less trouble.

But you can't, of course. So which will get you in more trouble?

Seeing Red said...

Throw the USG including all appointees & electees into Obamacare and give them the spending. Barry won't submit another budget until this Kabuki crisis is over.

garage mahal said...

But you can't, of course. So which will get you in more trouble?

But the government can, and does. It's one of its functions. But yes, sending in a counterfeit bill would get me in more trouble than not paying it.

Revenant said...

But the government can, and does.

But the government's only equivalent to a "mortgage" is Treasury notes. That's the money it borrowed; it is obligated, per the Constitution, to pay that. Like I noted above, it only needs a few hundred billion to do that, and easily brings in that much in taxes.

In contrast, Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid recipients are owed nothing. If the government stopped paying them tomorrow they would have no legal grounds for complaint (with the caveat that Medicaid/Medicare would be on the hook for procedures already performed).

We send checks to Social Security recipients not because we owe them the money, but because Congress said "send them money". If Congress at the same time says "but we're not giving you any money or letting you borrow it" (which is exactly what they did when they passed the "fiscal cliff" tax cuts without raising the debt ceiling), no check need be sent.

What, you think Obama's going to be impeached for not spending money he wasn't given? Hilarious stuff. :)

Rusty said...

garage mahal said...
If any significant fraction of the public cannot immediately see the ludicrousness of the $1-trillion-coin idea, there's no hope for the country

Crazier than defaulting on debt promises?


You're not getting it.
Minting a coin and claiming it's worth a trillion dollars IS defaulting on debt promises.

garage mahal said...

@Revenant
I don't know the legalities of arbitrarily withholding SS checks to recipients because Congress didn't pass a clean debt ceiling increase. It would certainly be challenged though. The debt ceiling limit itself may be unconstitutional. In any event it's a really stupid way to run a government.

Revenant said...

I don't know the legalities of arbitrarily withholding SS checks to recipients because Congress didn't pass a clean debt ceiling increase.

There's nothing "arbitrary" about refraining from writing a check because your current bank balance is $0. That's about as non-arbitrary as a financial decision can get, really.

It would certainly be challenged though.

That's a meaningless statement, since whatever decision Obama makes will wind up being challenged. What matters is whether the challenge would be successful, and the answer to that is "no, it would not". The courts have already ruled that Social Security taxes carry no associated right to receive Social Security benefits.

The debt ceiling limit itself may be unconstitutional.

If Obama thought he could win a debt ceiling challenge in court, he would have challenged it in court already instead of bargaining with the Republican minority for extensions. Given that Congress -- not the Executive -- is granted both the power to borrow and the power to coin money, it seems much more likely that the coin stunt would be unconstitutional than that the debt ceiling would be. The debt ceiling is, after all, a limit imposed by Congress on its OWN power, not on the executive's.

In any event it's a really stupid way to run a government.

Both parties and all three branches of government have been acting like a pack of spoiled children for years. This is nothing new.

Lawyer Mom said...

@Revenant is correct. Social security is not a "public debt."

From Taranto's Best of the Web column today:

"The 14th Amendment clearly does not authorize the executive branch to incur more debt without congressional approval. How could Pelosi possibly imagine it does? She seems to be construing "public debt" broadly to refer not only to payments due bondholders, but all money Congress has ordered to be spent.

That flies in the face of Flemming v. Nestor (1960), in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that Social Security was "a noncontractual benefit," so that Congress has the authority to modify its eligibility requirements. If Social Security payments were a public debt, the 14th Amendment would prevent Congress not only from reducing them but even from questioning them."

http://online.wsj.com/article/best_of_the_web_today.html

Michael said...

They would withhold a few ss checks for the public relations coup of showing some starving oldies who were about to be thrown on the street because of the mean republicans. You bet they would. And pray they died on camera. They would wait for a bus load of kids pulling up to the National Zoo before they closed it. For the cameras. They would not lay off some bureaucrat third stringer, however.

Rusty said...

Lawyer Mom said...
@Revenant is correct. Social security is not a "public debt."

True. Until you borrow against it. Which the government ha been known to do.

Revenant said...

True. Until you borrow against it. Which the government ha been known to do.

But the government only has to repay that portion of the debt if the SSA asks them to, and it isn't legally obligated to.

The SSA is obligated to spend the payroll tax revenues on SS payments; once that money runs out, it can legally stop writing checks. It *can* cash in its Treasury notes, but doesn't have to do so.

DADvocate said...

There are two ways to generate confidence. First, by inspiring and generating genuine confidence in one's self the the group (team) one is associated with through the appropriate work and actions, like Nick Saban does with the Alabama football team.

The other is being a cheap, lying con man, like Obama and his cohorts.

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