New budget fix: Pawn Mount Rushmore?

Hey, the country has been talking about minting a massive platinum coin. Could selling a giant granite tourist trap be any more ludicrous?

By Kim Peterson Jan 15, 2013 8:12AM
Credit: Purestock/Getty Images
Caption: Mount Rushmore National Memorial South DakotaThe White House has killed a proposal to mint a $1 trillion coin to get around the debt ceiling. And now it's facing what of course is the next logical idea: pawning Mount Rushmore to the Federal Reserve.

According to a petition filed with the White House, the government should pawn the mountain to the Federal Reserve if the Treasury Department can't pay the interest on the federal debt.

"Now that #MintTheCoin is dead," reads the petition, referring to the movement to mint the trillion-dollar coin, "our best option is clearly to sell Mount Rushmore to the Fed, and buy it back later once our cash flow problem is solved."

How much is Mount Rushmore worth? The entire project, which began in 1927, took 14 years and cost just $1 million. The sculpture was a transparent play for tourism money, and it worked: About 3 million people visit each year.

All six of South Dakota's national parks, of which Rushmore is the largest, contributed $168 million in economic benefit in 2010, according to the National Park Service. In fact, Jay Leno joked last year that Mount Rushmore is the only thing to see in South Dakota. Here's the text of a fake narrated commercial that ran on the "Tonight Show," according to the Rapid City Journal:
"Spend a week in South Dakota. On Monday, see Mount Rushmore. On Tuesday, see Mount Rushmore again. On Wednesday, visit the gift shop at Mount Rushmore. And on Thursday, relive your first experience, at Mount Rushmore."
Clearly, Mount Rushmore is priceless to South Dakota. And perhaps the federal government could get a pretty penny for selling it to the Federal Reserve.

The proposal is obviously going nowhere. Only seven signatures had been collected by the petition Monday night, and 25,000 are needed by Feb. 13.

But the idea has been embraced in social media, with the #PawnTheMountain hashtag gaining steam in some circles on Twitter. The idea may have come from Jordan Weissman, a business writer for The Atlantic who suggested it on Twitter as a way to avoid default. An associate editor at The Atlantic, Matthew O'Brien, wrote Monday that the Treasury could really sell anything valuable enough to the Fed with the agreement to buy it back later. O'Brien may have started the White House petition, in fact.

"This kind of repurchase (repo) agreement would give the Treasury cash flow if it's running so low that it can't pay the interest on our debt," O'Brien wrote.

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393Comments
Jan 15, 2013 1:30PM
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i's rathere we sell gietner and obama to the chinese as a first measure
Jan 15, 2013 1:28PM
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If Obama & the Democrats would stop spending there would be no need for rediculous ideas like this.  If Obama had his way he'd sell the entire country to Islamics from rich oil countries so his islamic bros & the Muslim Brotherhood could decimate the USA.  Obama is transforming this country into a welfare ghetto. 

Jan 15, 2013 1:28PM
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Are you teaching your kids and grandkids mandarin?  If not you should be.  I am because their futures are being pawned by the current President who's own kids will never want for anything.


Goodbye America you were once so great.  Now all we have is an electorate voting largess for themselves from the public treasury.

 

"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Ironically, that same year Alexander Fraser Tytler, a European historian published The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic. In his publication, Tytler reported that from his research he had determined the following:

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over a loss of fiscal responsibility, always followed by a dictatorship. The average of the world's great civilizations before they decline has been 200 years. These nations have progressed in this sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith,
From spiritual faith to great courage,
From courage to liberty,
From liberty to abundance,
From abundance to selfishness,
From selfishness to complacency,
From complacency to apathy,
From apathy to dependency,
From dependency back again to bondage."

If Tytler's conclusion is correct, this year America exceeded the average length for a democratic form of government by 33 years.

Jan 15, 2013 1:25PM
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The Federal government is charged with defense of the states.  The Federal Government is trying to run everything in the country.  That is the individual State job.  Social Security, Medicare, and Defense and Pollution are the only things the Federal Government has business in.
Jan 15, 2013 1:23PM
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Is not it like getting money out of the right pocket and putting it in the left one?  Because all this is sounding really ridiculous.  That or

 

Someone should explain why a federal reserve has all the money in the world while the government is broke..?  Who put all that cash in the federal reserve..?  If the federal reserve has all that power, what the F do we need the White House, Congress, Representatives for? 

Jan 15, 2013 1:22PM
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WHAT THE **** ARE WE LETTING THESE CROOKS GET AWAY WITH !!??

CHINESE ARE BUYING UP NEW YORK, THE COLUMBIANS ARE BUYING UP MIAMI. . . 

THE CHINESE PROBABLY ALREADY OWN WALL STREET, AND THE CIA. . .WHAT THE **** IS NEXT !?

Jan 15, 2013 1:19PM
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I can see it now; electronic billboards across the top and bottom of the faces.  
Jan 15, 2013 1:17PM
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Why does the government have to pay the federal reserve anyways? It the US government who backs up everything they do?? Its the governments money and that is who prints the money and says its good using their creditworthiness? More and more apparent there are many operations of the Fed that are nothing more than a racket and like mobsters in a casino count room, skimming off the top and sticking it to the American TP since it was created. I don't know about doing away with the Fed but some serious restructuring and reform is past do. The coin plan made me think of the Chicago plan I briefly read about, did catch attention of IMF managers. I'm not an economist or finical guru but there appears to be some major one sided things going on that only benefit a select few here.

Otherwise this is idea in the article above is just dumb.

I think its time

Jan 15, 2013 1:15PM
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Sounds about right; we have sold [given] the rest of our national parks to the united nations.

Next time you go to the Great Smokie Mountains, look at the sign.

A bio-sphere network.

 

Jan 15, 2013 1:14PM
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listen the idea that some ****...would even come up with a trillion dollar coin....hello who has a trillion dollars in there account....abso****.i.n.lutely no one....fire the guy who ever thought of it....in fact clear out all who are giving themselves raises...and you will lower the debt ceiling...remeber YOU just got a raise...while people here are starving that work HARDER than you do
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Thats right sell something else to the Rothchilds. If Obama does this I expect the mountain will be destroyed by patriotic citizens. Time to stop selling the country off. Quit paying the banks for the bad debt that they created. Let them pay their own debt and send them to prison for the illegal action they took in creating the bad debt. Hell Iceland did it and they are much smaller than us but I guess their government isn't corrupted like ours. Time for Americans to take this country back and kick these low life crooks out
Jan 15, 2013 1:11PM
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the USA has already pawned our national park system to china ,what next do the a-holes want

 

 

Jan 15, 2013 1:11PM
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  start charging all the countries our soldiers are protecting,,

 

Jan 15, 2013 1:11PM
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Rent out the Lincoln Bedroom again and let the first lady and Hillary turn tricks! We have prostituted the country to Communist China, if we have to be screwed might as well get paid for it!
Jan 15, 2013 1:10PM
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obama should leave office,so the USA can be run right. he has not accomplished nothing of any value, for senior citizens,military,economy,gasoline prices,heating fuel oil,& import taxes from other countries.raise the import taxes to 50% except oil & gasoline

 

if everything WAL MART sold was made in AMERICA there would be no unemployment in AMERICA also deportation of all illegal immigrants would mean 0 unemployment in AMERICA

Jan 15, 2013 1:10PM
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iz whats ludicrous iz that mt rushmore IZ where again ? ooooopppss. for 1trillion dollars i can fix it ?
Jan 15, 2013 1:09PM
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You know our Government has Dragged us into this DEBT crisis over and over again, Pawning, Minting, blahblah blah makes one want to VOMIT, the way out of this is TERM LIMITS Starting today.If the members of Congress are not Fiscal Responsable they can only serve one term of 2-years MAX!!

And no more than 3-2year Terms Max, and they are prohibited from enriching themselves while serving

 

GET WITH IT AMERICA

Jan 15, 2013 1:06PM
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Lets keep the Presidents Vacations down to 1 a yr. If he wants more have him leave Air force one home. And pay w his own $$$
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