Trillion $ platinum coins?

[psCargile]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/won ... s/?print=1

What are the ramifications of this?

Call me crazy, but I strongly suspect money to be the physical manifestaton of value, and a loophole in a law cannot give value to two shiny discs of metal unless the discs of metal have that intrisic value aleady. Is it possible to grant such coins the value of a trillion dollars each, or is this like printing a trillion dollars with nothing to back it?

"Thanks to an odd loophole in current law, the U.S. Treasury is technically allowed to mint as many coins made of platinum as it wants and can assign them whatever value it pleases.

Under this scenario, the U.S. Mint would produce (say) a pair of trillion-dollar platinum coins."

Why just two? Why not make as many as you can? And why just a trillion? Why not a bucket full of decillion dollar coins?