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Imagine sitting around the kitchen table, trying to figure out how you're going to pay off that next-generation HDTV you just bought.
Then someone has an idea. Brush off one of the old checker pieces in the attic, assign it a value of, say, $2,000 -- and use that newly minted "coin" to pay the credit card.
Such an absurd idea is, pun intended, gaining currency as a technically legal way for Washington to avert a looming fight over the debt ceiling. A Democratic congressman, a Nobel-winning economist and several prominent writers are now floating the idea that the Treasury Department should use obscure powers to mint a $1 trillion coin if Congress does not permit an increase in the debt ceiling.
That coin, then, could be used to pay America's debts.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., told Capital New York that the "out of the ordinary" idea could actually work.
"I'm being absolutely serious," he said. "It sounds silly, but it's absolutely legal."