It’s troubling that the government would even consider a policy that sounds like a cheap Hollywood plot device. Wouldn’t we just encourage the emergence of a James-Bond-villain with such a prize?

Scaramanga: the Man with the Trillion Dollar Coin

The security alone for such a coin would cost a mint–security that would prove worthless if aliens ever decided to steal it. Then we’d owe them our children.

Statute of limitations is only twenty years. 21 years later: “Here’s my trillion dollar coin!”

But then again, a thousand billion dollar coins spread out over a thousand secret locations doesn’t sound any better. Security costs would be much higher.

Also, it’s a lot easier to buy a pack of gum or some other trifle and “break” a billion dollar coin than it is with a trillion dollar coin.  A lot easier.

It’s almost chump change in Dubai and Macau. Benny Binion would have taken it for a table wager. His heirs would have taken it for other things 😦

But it would take a James-Bond-villain-type-fence to convert a trillion dollar coin into untraceable fully fungible assets such as, say, cash. Super Fly meets Super Fence!

I never thought a fiscal policy could be described as “having bad vibes,” or “too much like Hollywood,” but I think the trillion dollar coin idea achieves that distinction.