Miss Dada  🏳️‍⚧️

even Normal Coins are not debt, though. coins are different. yes, the decisionmaking process is a bit more complex than what i'm laying out, but the properties of the coinage are the same

You're right that coins aren't debt, but that's because the Mint doesn't report to the federal reserve, the report to the secretary of treasury. The only time coins go through the fed is to fund the mint itself. The secretary of treasury cannot increase the coins in circulation

oh, yeah, that's fair

Seems like the treasury can mint coins whenever it wants? https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/5111 …

"As needed to meet the needs of the united states" isn't the same as "whenever it wants". It means at the discretion of congress, to fund itself, or to replace coins taken out of circulation. If you look at section 5112 there's a special provision for commemorative coins

You can also reverse this logic -- if they could just mint any coins whenever they want they wouldn't have looked at using the trillion dollar commemorative coin loophole to work around the debt ceiling

well, it's "in amounts the secretary decides are necessary" I read 5112, it doesn't seem like (k) provides additional discretion over the general one given by 5111 (a)?

Sorry, there's a few things being conflated here. Yeah the treasury decides how much currency needs to be in circulation. Yes, the secretary has discretion over that (but there's expectations of how that discretion is used, hence the "needs of the united states". But...