(This not to be confused with the usual mode of Repubs to dumb everything down so as to give the rubes the comfortable feeling that anybody with a GED and the "common sense of the country-folk" could run this joint).
Anyway - Paul Krugman at NYT (re: the Trillion Dollar Coin):
There seem to be two kinds of objections. One is that it would be undignified. Here’s how to think about that: we have a situation in which a terrorist may be about to walk into a crowded room and threaten to blow up a bomb he’s holding. It turns out, however, that the Secret Service has figured out a way to disarm this maniac — a way that for some reason will require that the Secretary of the Treasury briefly wear a clown suit. (My fictional plotting skills have let me down, but there has to be some way to work this in). And the response of the nervous Nellies is, “My god, we can’t dress the secretary up as a clown!” Even when it will make him a hero who saves the day?
The other objection is the apparently primordial fear that mocking the monetary gods will bring terrible retribution.--and--
The other side of this debate has been predicting runaway inflation for more than four years, as the monetary base has tripled. The same people predicted soaring interest rates from government borrowing. Meanwhile, the liquidity-trap people like me predicted what would actually happen: low inflation and low rates. This has to be the most decisive real-world test of opposing theories ever."Them Damned Libruls" have been right about a lot.
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