http://my.firedoglake.com/beowulf/2011/01/03/coin-seigniorage-and-the-irrelevance-of-the-debt-limit/
“If you think about it, it does seem odd that the US Government is the monopoly supplier of US dollars and yet our politicians go through life thinking the government will run out of money unless it can borrow more. Of course that’s not true, the coins in your pocket are legal tender and yet were not issued against debt. They’re minted by the US Government, backed only by the gilt-edged credit of the American people, no one is paid interest on it and they don’t add a penny to the statutory debt. What’s more, the use of coins as legal tender is scalable, they could replace the use of Tsy debt sales. No, you wouldn’t have to carry more coins in your pocket. Nothing would change except Tsy would be credited by the Federal Reserve for the sale of interest-free Treasury coins (presumably of large denominations) instead of interest-bearing Treasury bonds.
The two great powers of a sovereign state are the monopoly of violence and seigniorage, the profits from the creation of money. If the federal deficit (that is, expenditures in excess of tax receipts) were funded by seigniorage revenue, not only would there be no debt service owed on the money, there’d actually be no deficit. Seigniorage (whether generated by the Federal Reserve or by the US Mint) is supposed to be booked by Treasury as “miscellaneous receipts”, since the funds canb be appropriated for other govt uses, it actually reduces the deficit dollar for dollar. Looking into it, I found that while Federal Reserve profits are counted as a revenue source (larger than estate taxes and customs duties combined), US Mint profits are not. I sent a couple of emails to the Tsy Inspector General’s office to point this out, but have’t heard anything back. I’ve copied below what I sent Tsy (changing the formatting a bit to merge the two emails). I go WAY into the weeds legally (“presumably in USSGL account, Acct Title: Seigniorage; Acct No 5795?), so I apologize for that in advance. Feel free to ask me to translate anything below into the English language. The bottom line is, the Secretary of Treasury already has the authority to create money without debt so there’s no fiscal reason to raise the debt limit. What’s more, since the Federal Reserve began paying interest on reserves in 2008, there’s no longer a monetary reason to raise the debt limit either.”
- Robbrian
