Unbalanced budgets have led Congress to raise or temporarily extend the national debt limit on 78 separate occasions since 1960, but political gridlock has some experts worried this time could be different. The potential for a worst-case scenario where lawmakers can't come to an agreement leaving the U.S. unable to pay its debts has reinvigorated the debate around potential borrowing limit workarounds, including the absurd-but-plausible proposal that was once Nobel laureate Paul Krugman’s favorite—minting a $1 trillion coin.
“By minting a $1 trillion coin, then depositing it at the Fed, the Treasury could acquire enough cash to sidestep the debt ceiling—while doing no economic harm at all. So why not?” the economist explained in a 2014 New York Times op-ed. This was a sea change in trillion-dollar-coin discourse, which had been popularized by former Insider editor Joe Weisenthal, who is now ensconced at Bloomberg as the co-host of the Odd Lots podcast.
