Josh Barro, Columnist

Platinum Coin Is Less Silly Than Its Alternatives

January 9, 2013 at 5:19 PM UTC

Josh Barro is the lead writer for the Ticker, Bloomberg View's blog on economics, finance and politics. His primary areas of interest include tax and fiscal policy, state and local government, and planning and land use. Previously, Barro was a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and a commercial real estate banker at Wells Fargo. He holds a bachelor's degree in psychology from Harvard and lives in Queens, New York.

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Donald Marron, head of the Brookings-Urban Tax Policy Center and formerdirector of the Congressional Budget Office, wrote a great post yesterdayarguing for the platinum coin as a last resort in the deficit-ceiling standoff.He says something particularly important about the alternatives to the coin:

Analysts have considered a range of other optionsfor avoiding default, including prioritizing payments, asserting the debt limitis unconstitutional, and temporarily selling the gold in Fort Knox. All raisesevere practical, legal, and image problems. In this ugly group, the platinumcoin looks relatively shiny. In particular, it would be much less provocativethan President Obama asserting the debt limit is unconstitutional.