re: Trillion Dollar Coin Idea - Why Doesn't This Make Sense in My Head?

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But like drewnbrla and foshizzle said, in the absence of the US government you wouldn't be able to sell this coin for $1 trillion, so it's basically no different and no more imaginative than a trillion dollar bill.

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Well, no, but a trillion dollar bill is still worth a trillion dollars so long as it's legal tender.

If the Treasury Department decided to use the legal tender value of the coin to pay all its Medicare bills for a year or two, then it could just go ahead and do this (presumably electronically after taking the physical coin out of circulation). I'm guessing that there would be some kind of promises not to do that which would go along with the creation of the coin, but then again, this is all just a zany idea that's not really serious and is never going to happen.

What is serious, however, is the future prospect of the U.S. Treasury using seigniorage in the future ... albeit not with $1 trillion coins.