Everybody Get Ready For Treasury Paying Your T-Bills In Bitcoin! :D

Tariffs, Bitcoin reserves, deportations … sure seems like crashing the economy is the plan!

It’s easy, and fun, to dunk on That Man and the raging idiots who surround him, because they’re not serious people, and we will continue to mock them forever. But the shit he says, does, and tries to do can have dead-serious consequences, and you gotta take it seriously.

Mr. Bankrupted-Six-Businesses’ latest big-brain idea is to use the US’s Federal Reserve dollars to buy Bitcoins, which sounds like what your unemployed cousin would come up with after a few bongloads and a bag of Hot Takis.

Then, he’ll use the Bitcoins to pay the National Debt! Moaned he, last week: “Who knows, maybe we’ll pay off our 35 trillion dollars, hand them a little crypto check. We’ll hand them a little Bitcoin and wipe out our 35 trillion dollars.”

First of all, this is not a thing he can actually do.

The Federal Reserve is America’s central bank, like the Iron Bank of Braavos for the Seven Kingdoms of Wisteros. The Fed is a board of seven governors appointed to 14-year terms, it does not receive funding appropriated by Congress, and by design the Executive Branch can’t, or isn’t supposed to, boss them around. The chair is Jerome Powell, a Republican from the first Bush administration and former partner at The Carlyle Group, so hardly Wavy Gravy. He was appointed by That Man himself in 2017. And Powell is not planning to step down, and scoffed at the idea of being fired or demoted. “Not permitted under the law,” was all Powell would say about that. 

Could Congress pass a law to HASHTAG ENDTHEFED, sure, though a Wild West of banking would be the fastest foot-shooting of all time. But who the hell knows what will happen? Thomas Massie of Kentucky introduced a House Bill in May trying to do it.

Also, who does That Man want to pay with a “little crypto check”? Most of the US debt is owned by the US, not foreign governments. When you buy a Treasury bill, the deal is that you get dollars at the end of the term. Jerome Powell and company cannot change the deal halfway through, making it so that you get Doge coins and a Melania NFT back instead. And what happens if Jerome Powell forgets the password?

Getting the government to accept and pay in Bitcoin sure would be handy for making economic sanctions on, say, Russia, become pointless, though, which is just a coincidence, surely!

The Heritage Foundation, Elon, and Putin sure would like the end of The Fed and a whatevercoin economy, and Christian Nationalists who want to fast-forward to the endtimes part of the plot want it too.

Said Ron Paul’s pal Gary North: “God’s judgment, which is pro-revolution, will produce a cataclysmic collapse of the American political-economic system,” and that the “unbiblical financial system will not be reformed without a near-revolutionary crisis (the judgment of God).” He was surely fun at parties.

The Project 2025 “Mandate For Leadership” also rants (starting on page 731) that the Federal Reserve should be abolished, replaced by “free banking” whereby “neither interest rates nor the supply of money” would be “controlled by government.” Instead they want it replaced by the gold standard, which the US stopped using in 1933. (Though there’s still 6,331 metric tons of gold buried under Manhattan, fun fact!)

The US abandoned the Gold Standard for good reason, though. With a limited supply of money, deflation. Then interest rates will go through the roof. And the volatility would make the dollar quickly go the way of the Venetian ducat as the world’s reserve currency of choice. 

It’s all pretty dumb. But Elon and right-wingers sure have been slobbering to wreck the US economy by various means, then let God (aka himself and the nation’s billionaires) sort it out. Financial collapse is historically good for right-wing causes, and makes the rich richer.

Banking regulations, what is this, the nanny state? Rules that protect consumers, UGH! Biden has been HINDERING GROWTH!! “Set the economy’s animal spirits free”!! Implores an opinion piece in today’s Wall Street Journal. Okay, well, good luck trying to pay for your kid’s college or nana’s nursing home with them, Suzanne.

And then there’s tariffs. That Man has pledged to slap 60 percent of tariffs on all goods coming in from China and 10 percent on goods imported from all other countries. ICYMI, these are taxes paid by importers to the government. WalMart buys $10 t-shirts, has to give $6 of that to the US government, and then they pass the non-savings on to you. Who the hell would want this? Well, the libertarian-Right, who hope massive inflation will allow them to end the Federal Reserve and seize control of the monetary system. Also people who prefer American-made earbuds, which are two seashells and a string of dental floss.

Also in economy-wrecking, mass deportations. Not to minimize the human devastation and cruelty of it all, but labor shortages in tiny industries like “meat” and “house” will equal more inflation. 

And if none of that works to wreck the economy, there’s the debt ceiling. The federal debt limit will be reinstated on January 2, 2025, and the Treasury will start using “extraordinary measures,” aka dipping into cash on hand to pay the country’s credit card bills. But at some point next year, Congress will have to either raise the debt limit or default. And default would be real bad! But if the GOP libertarian-Right is serious about wanting to drown the government in a bucket, that would be a quick way. No Social Security checks, no paychecks for federal workers, markets around the world would destabilize, interest rates would skyrocket, and Goldman Sachs says it would kill one-tenth of American economic activity.

Anyway, who knows what will happen, but all signs point to stuff that’s not great, economically.

Sorry to be bearer of bad news.

[Washington Spectator/ WSJ/ Council on Foreign Relations]