Josh Barro, Columnist

Why Platinum Coin Opponents Are All Wrong

January 7, 2013 at 5:33 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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This morning, Joe Weisenthal and I took our message in favor of minting atrillion-dollar platinum coin to "Bloomberg Surveillance," where we were metwith the usual shock and horror from hosts Tom Keene and Sara Eisen. Platinumcoin opponents are so distressed that one, Republican Representative GregWalden, has said he will introduce legislation to ban the coin, citing my postfrom last week as a dangerous instigation.

Walden, Keene and Eisen are all wrong. Here are my responses to the mostcommon objections we are getting to the platinum coin proposal, in increasingorder of persuasiveness: