Debt Limit Options: "
"
Bruce Bartlett describes "radical options for preventing default" on the debt:
... One idea comes from Peterson Institute economist Joseph Gagnon, a former Federal Reserve official. He suggested to me that the Federal Reserve could temporarily buy some of the Treasury’s $300 billion stock of gold. This would allow the Fed to create cash that the Treasury could use to pay its bills until the debt limit is increased, at which time Treasury could simply buy it back. It would be a purely paper transaction that would have no real effect on the price of gold or anything else. The Fed could simultaneously sell an equal amount of securities from its portfolio to prevent the money supply from rising more than it desires.
A more radical solution would be to simply disregard the debt limit altogether on constitutional grounds, an idea I suggested in the Fiscal Times... University of Baltimore law professor Garrett Epps made a similar suggestion...
The essence of the argument involves section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which reads: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.” ...
Since my article appeared, I have had the opportunity to do further research on this topic and now feel even more strongly that the Fourteenth Amendment trumps the debt limit. ...
More here.
"
Comments