Bullions and bullions

Tom Maguire has been having more fun than a barrel of monkeying around macro economists at the Tribe-Krugman scholarly shortcomings over not small change;

“Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit,”  [a Treasury Dept spokesman said].

Noting that he (Maguire) told us so, and Laurence Tribe and Paul Krugman couldn't be bothered with something as trivial as the facts.  Which are, in this case, that there are definitions of 'bullion coins' and 'proof bullion coins' that preclude the gimmick being pushed to get around the Constitutional requirement that congress authorize any borrowing on the credit of the U.S.;

A bullion coin is valued by the weight of its metal, not its face amount. ....

By this criteria, a trillion dollar platinum coin would need to contain a trillion dollar's worth of platinum (which doesn't exist) and would weigh roughly 18,000 tons.

....Krugman's critique of the Administration's negotiating strategy would stagger off in a very different direction if he took the trouble to figure out whether the Trillion Dollar coin is likely to be deemed to be legal. Oh, well, I guess even Obama-bashing is more fun than researching - Laurence Tribe didn't do the homework, and now Krugman won't pause and check Tribe's work.