A Gold Theory That Could Save America From The Debt Ceiling

From one crazy theory to save America to the next...

That's this morning's message from Art Cashin, UBS Financial Services' director of New York Stock Exchange floor operations.

With Congress far from a deal to address the U.S. debt ceiling, cynics, skeptics, and some astute theorists have been coming up with some wild alternatives that could prevent the U.S. from defaulting on it's obligations.

Cashin wrote about one new theory in this morning's Cashin's Comments:

The Platinum Coin Meets Goldfinger – The thesis that the Treasury could mint a trillion dollar coin to avoid the debt ceiling may have collided with the conspiracy theories around the German repatriating of gold bullion reserves.

Out in the Lewis Carroll land of the blogosphere, the alchemists are at again – well sort of.

A new theory says that if the Treasury marked up its gold reserve to current market value (circa $1600), it would create enough of a windfall to allow the Treasury to keep spending despite the ceiling.

Some folks clearly have too much time on their hands.