US Government Bankruptcy

[cxxguy]

Since the dollars wouldn't have any exchange value... the act of being paid would be largely ceremonial.

Quite

Of course I would be smart enough to take the dollars... preferably in coinage, and preferably the lowest denomination... but if not, in paper of the lowest denomination.

Yep, pennies have, IIRC, the highest melt value of US legal tender.

The t-bill is usually electronic...

Last ones I had were purchased by my grandparents in the '70s.

[Keyser Soce]

Since the dollars wouldn't have any exchange value... the act of being paid would be largely ceremonial.

Quite

Of course I would be smart enough to take the dollars... preferably in coinage, and preferably the lowest denomination... but if not, in paper of the lowest denomination.

Yep, pennies have, IIRC, the highest melt value of US legal tender.

The t-bill is usually electronic...

Last ones I had were purchased by my grandparents in the '70s.

You forgot about these legal tender coins.

http://www.coinflation.com/silver_coin_values.html

[John Edward Mercier]

The problem is you could take payment... but as cxxguy stated you really wouldn't be able to demand the exact format.
We were more playing.

[John Edward Mercier]

FED just did quantitative expansion today.
I see $1.15T being reported in purchases of interest-backed securities...

[cxxguy]

Time to stock up on gold, silver, brass, steel and lead.

The latter three will be most valuable in ingots shaped like bullets and guns.

[bigmike]

FED just did quantitative expansion today.
I see $1.15T being reported in purchases of interest-backed securities...

Yeah, scary day. I guess we're now buying $350B in T-bills from ourselves.

Good thing congress was there to pass legislation against the AIG bonuses so I was distracted.

[BillKauffman]

I don't understand the reasoning of those who object to either Social Credit or Greenbackism as an increase in statism over the present system.

By way of background, Social Credit is a proposal to remedy corporate capitalism's chronic tendency toward overinvestment and overproduction by periodically depositing a sum of interest-free new money, equivalent in aggregate to the demand shortfall, in the citizenry's bank accounts.   Greenbackism is a proposal that countercyclical deficit spending, rather than being financed by interest-bearing debt in the form of government bonds, should simply take the form of directly spending money into existence by the Treasury.

It seems to me the sticking point, if there is one, should be at the idea of government as regulator of the money supply by creating fiat money, or of deficit spending to meet demand shortfalls, in the first place.  But these things are overwhelmingly accepted in principle by the mainstream public.  So the sticking point about Social Credit and greenbackism can only be the sacred principle that the fiat money must be specifically lent into existence at interest, and that deficit spending must be financed by government bonds.

The problem is not the function itself, but only carrying it out in a way that doesn't enable a class of coupon-clippers to skim the cream off the top.

It also seems to me, on the other hand, that if these basic functions are accepted in principle, it makes it more statist–not less–to compound the injury by doing it through private accomplices, and empowering them to charge interest for the function, rather than simply doing so directly.
http://c4ss.org/content/211

[John Edward Mercier]

FED just did quantitative expansion today.
I see $1.15T being reported in purchases of interest-backed securities...

Yeah, scary day. I guess we're now buying $350B in T-bills from ourselves.

Good thing congress was there to pass legislation against the AIG bonuses so I was distracted.

The FedRes purchasing us debt is how the money supply is physically expanded... its what many call 'printing money' and hasn't been done since the 60s.

I won't quote you Bill, because that would take up too much space...
The reason is the the USD is in and of itself a commodity-type instrument subject to supply and demand.
Should the instrument itself have too much supply any and all assets priced in it will decline... destroying the underlying purchasing power of laborers.