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Obviously this is absurd, but the Treasury doing absurd things with loopholes is not new. Example: the $100 United States Notes. Before all paper money became

Obviously this is absurd, but the Treasury doing absurd things with loopholes is not new. Example: the $100 United States Notes. Before all paper money became Federal Reserve Notes, some was legally required to be "United States Notes", which were direct obligations of the US Treasury (as opposed to coming from the Federal Reserve system). Before the 1970s $2s and $5s were issued as USNs, with a red seal instead of the green seal of FRNs (or the blue seal of Silver Certificates, which had a slightly different legal authorization and obligation). When the concept of redeeming paper money for silver ended in the 1960s, USNs became irrelevant, and the $2 and $5 USNs were pulled from circulation and eventually reissued as FRNs. But the treasury still had the legal requirement to circulate a certain dollar amount in USNs. So they printed up a bunch of $100 USNs, stuck them in boxes, and occasionally carted them around between different bank vaults, which technically met the definition of "circulate". This went on until 1994, when Congress finally repealed the law requiring the USN circulation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Note https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Note

ianleeclark 5y ago
> Obviously this is absurd Default seems a bit more absurd. Gotta keep the machine running one way or another.
panarky 5y ago
> Obviously this is absurd What's even more absurd is that Congress can approve trillions in tax cuts and new spending over the last four years, and then just refuse to pay for what they already approved.
- jeffdn 5y ago
  Well, and in the same vein, that Congress has essentially become a zero-sum game, where one party attempts to cut taxes, slash regulation, and prevent the government from paying for anything except for a larger military. The idea that the government doing anything except for defending the country is socialism is patently absurd, and the fact that so-called respectable people, in large numbers, keep parroting the idea is toxic for democracy. Marco Rubio, for instance, has called Biden's policy agenda Marxist -- this coming from a man who has spent his political career agitating against normalizing diplomatic relations with Cuba. Conflating the two makes Cuba's government look more benign than it is, and makes the American government look more extreme than it is.

ianleeclark 5y ago

> Obviously this is absurd Default seems a bit more absurd. Gotta keep the machine running one way or another.

panarky 5y ago

> Obviously this is absurd What's even more absurd is that Congress can approve trillions in tax cuts and new spending over the last four years, and then just refuse to pay for what they already approved.

jeffdn 5y ago
Well, and in the same vein, that Congress has essentially become a zero-sum game, where one party attempts to cut taxes, slash regulation, and prevent the government from paying for anything except for a larger military. The idea that the government doing anything except for defending the country is socialism is patently absurd, and the fact that so-called respectable people, in large numbers, keep parroting the idea is toxic for democracy. Marco Rubio, for instance, has called Biden's policy agenda Marxist -- this coming from a man who has spent his political career agitating against normalizing diplomatic relations with Cuba. Conflating the two makes Cuba's government look more benign than it is, and makes the American government look more extreme than it is.