If McCarthy won’t defend the global economy, Biden and Yellen must

This fall is fast approaching. Americans are thinking about Halloween costumes or how their kids are faring in the new school year, but one more pressing and widespread concern occupies the nation’s minds: the collapsing global economy, which has been spinning out with no signs of slowing, leading to heavy job losses and disappearing savings and investments. Many countries have experienced economic catastrophe and are considering reintroducing the dollar as their reserve currency.

The culprit isn’t another virus or some natural disaster, and in fact the whole thing could have been avoided with a few lines of legislation guided through by a leader with backbone. Instead, the blame lies with Kevin McCarthy, House speaker, and the extremists to which he prostrated while he sought the whip. McCarthy lost his power and the House stopped raising the debt limit. The U.S. will default on its debts.

In fact, we don’t have to wait months to begin feeling the impacts of this dangerous game. Janet Yellen, Treasury Secretary has already informed Congress that the government will hit its debt ceiling this week, and while it won’t actually run out of funds to pay its obligations until sometime around June, this lag can already send shockwaves through the international economic system.

Any legacy McCarthy believes he can create as a speaker will be an afterthought to the headline about him being a spectator as the economy was destroyed by a few zealots. If he won’t do it, someone else will have to, and that can be Yellen herself, under direction from President Biden.

The zany idea of minting a $1 trillion or similar platinum coin and depositing it into the Treasury’s accounts — a legally bulletproof idea, according to several scholars — often gets dismissed offhand for being a little madcap. Yet sometimes the best fix to an inane problem is an inane solution, and it’s a much better precedent than calling the nation’s creditworthiness into question.

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