Zimbabwe to end tax relief for miners to spur mineral processing
President Emmerson Mnangagwa said last month the government would introduce incentives to encourage mining companies to process their output locally.
While the Obama administration threw cold water on the $1 trillion platinum coin loophole many months ago, the idea was considered more carefully than officials have previously let on.
The Huffington Post filed a Freedom of Information Act and learned that the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel provided administration officials with a memo on the platinum coin option. The memo’s date and contents were not divulged.
A year ago when the administration and congress were at an impasse to fund the government, the idea was floated to print a large denomination platinum coin that would monetize the entire U.S. debt.
The idea gained enough traction that the US Treasury made a statement taking the funding mechanism off the table.
“Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit,” said Anthoney Coley, a US Treasury official, in January 2013.
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