I was fortunate enough to be invited onto Up W/ Chris Hayes this morning to talk about, yes, the trillion dollar coin.

I'm not going to be so arrogant as to say that I said anything brilliant, but Chris' introduction to the whole discussion was marvelous.

In addition to a crystal clear explanation of the politics and mechanics of the idea that a platinum coin could avert the debt ceiling crisis, Chris did something that we've never seen done before: Peel back the curtain a little bit and talk substantively about the fact that money is an artificial creation of government, and that this has profound implications.

He showed a cartoon that was made by Abraham Lincoln's critics, showing him creating cash with a magic money machine, that looks so much like a lot of the anti-Bernanke stuff you see online today.

The point being: Governments are always finding novel ways to fund themselves, and there's a long history of critics thinking it's dangerous magic.

You can watch Chris' whole intro here. It's all great, although the discussion about the nature of money itself comes at the 5:25 mark.

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