Sunday, July 04, 2010

Creative solutions to America's problems, part 1: The national debt and unfunded liabilities

The US government is in debt to the tune of $13 trillion.

Estimates of the US government's unfunded future liabilities run to more than $100 trillion.

Hey, we can fix it!

The US uses a fiat currency. There's no problem, in theory, with temporarily pegging that currency to another, or accepting/offering another currency in payment of debt.

All Congress needs to do is pass a law temporarily making some other currency legal tender for the payment of debt. If they got really creative, they could get it down to the instant, e.g. "at the moment of payment of government debt, [insert currency here] shall be considered legal tender."

After that, it's just a matter of spending $2.98 on eBay (including postage!), and ...


... problem solved!

N.B. I see from comments that my C4SS colleague, Mike Gogulski, has launched his own site for displaying and selling large-face-value fiat currencies: Big Banknotes. Check it out!

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