What the Tooth Fairy Can Tell Us About the Economy

The annual Tooth Fairy Poll and it showed that the average amount left under kids' pillows for lost baby teeth shot up mo

A year ago, out of nowhere, the grotesque suggestion to "resolve" the US debt ceiling with a platinum dollar coin came, and like a bad dream, mercifully disappeared even as the debt ceiling negotiations dragged until the last minute, without this idea being remotely considered for implementation, for one simple reason: it is sheer political, monetary and financial lunacy.

Do you believe in the Tooth Fairy economic indicator? Maybe you will now: There was double-digit growth in the amount left under the pillow in 2012!

The stakes surrounding the plan to mint a platinum coin to circumvent the debt ceiling continue to rise. Now Wall Street is clearly getting interested. Ethan Harris at Bank of America is out with a new note titled The Trillion Dollar Tooth Fairy, which blasts the idea:

Three things that Ben Bernanke doesn't believe exist are Leprechauns, the Tooth Fairy and Stagflation. He has totally relied on specious theories like output gaps and a very high unemployment rate to keep inflation in check. What he fails to realize is that an increase in the money supply doesn't always engender job growth or ...

My latest Tax Notes column which came out today (subscription-only access here) is basically a recap of my testimony on March 1st before the

More on John Taylor (and John Cogan, this was briefly mentioned at the end of an earlier post along with a link to a rebuttal from Noah Smith):

Carnivorous ants, poisonous plants, meteor showers, and underground gas vents have all been considered as possible culprits of "fairy circles" — bare patches of soil bordered by a ring of taller grasses and found dotting the desert grasslands of Namibia in southern Africa.&nbs