At the risk of coming off as a second-rate Atrios, it is time for President Obama to mint the damn coin already. As has already been widely discussed, a quirk in federal law makes it perfectly legal for the Treasury Department to mint platinum coins in any denomination. So the Treasury could mint a few trillion dollar coins, deposit them in the Federal Reserve, and then write checks off of that.

Up against the debt ceiling? No problem. We'd have plenty of money to meet our obligations. Yeah, I know it sounds silly, but it's perfectly legal, and no more inflationary than borrowing a shit-ton of money. And even a little silliness is preferable to the economic insanity that would come from defaulting on our national debt.

But why even wait a couple weeks for the debt ceiling crisis to hit? Obama should just mint those coins now, taking the debt ceiling off the table. The Teabaggers aren't bluffing. They're eager to drive the global economy off a cliff. They're fucking crazy. So the only responsible thing to do is to take away their cliff. And that means that the only responsible thing to do is to mint the damn coin.