Long story short, the idea is that if the House Republicans won’t let the Treasury pay the bills we have already accrued, the secretary of the Treasury can use a legislative loophole to mint a platinum coin, say it’s worth a trillion bucks, and deposit it into the bank, for paying bills (and possibly hookers).
And — surprise! — the concept completely eludes Fox News.
During a segment featuring an undoubtedly ingenious guest, Fox News displayed a graphic that said the platinum coin “would weigh 17,773,995 tons,” be “equal in weight to 89 blue whales,” and “equal to ballistic missile submarine.” Hey, Fox News Maker of Graphics: Here’s a link to the Wikipedia article on seigniorage. It explains why it doesn’t make any damn sense for money to be worth the amount it costs to manufacture, which you probably should have known, on account of 100-dollar bills are the same size as 1-dollar bills instead of giant money-tarps.
Also, even if we assume that a trillion-dollar coin would cost one trillion dollars, because the Treasury is run by toddlers, the numbers are still wrong. Platinum was trading yesterday at $1,632.40 per troy ounce, so $1 trillion in platinum would weigh about 612,594,952 troy ounces. That’s about 42,006,511 pounds, which is 21,000 tons: Fox News was only off by 17,752,995 tons! A literal 99.9 percent error!
FAUX News Doesn't Know How Coins Work
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