News is spreading now (via the usual media – Twitter at the forefront) that Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeiden, seized earlier this morning from what was supposed to be one of the most secure locations in Tripoli (the Corinthia Hotel), has been released.

Now that things are all right in that regard – for now – perhaps we can look back at a peculiar previous tweet from the BBC:

So “detained legally,” eh? And indeed, if you want to click through to the article (go ahead, you can do it right above on the tweet itself), there is some scattered talk of the militants who seized the PM operating to fulfill some order – to arrest the head of government, mind you – from the “prosecutor general.”

Hmmm, maybe we see here an interesting technique for getting certain US legislators out of the way, and thereby getting the US Government funded once more and in a position to fully pay all its debts, and on time?

OK, on second thought forget that – this governmental paralysis, instigated by a radical Republican faction, is already coming to resemble far too much the America of just before the Civil War.

The hashtag #mintthecoin is currently white-hot in the Twitterverse. In case you’re not following the discussion, it has to do with the idea that one option President Obama has, should House Republicans be determined to deny the necessary rise in the debt ceiling so as to force the US government to default on many of its financial obligations sometime around mid-February, is to take advantage of the statute allowing the Treasury to mint platinum coins of any denomination to fashion a, say, $1 trillion coin and present it to the New York Federal Reserve to, in effect, create that money to spend.

This is the idea advanced particularly vehemently these days by Nobel Prize-winning economist and NYT blogger Paul Krugman, who notes that while it might seem a silly idea on its face, any notion that the Republicans can be persuaded to stop holding the credit-worthiness of the US Federal Government hostage is “just ridiculous – far more ridiculous than the notion of the coin.”

Some do not agree, so that a full-fledged debate on the advisability of #mintthecoin has erupted among the American punditocracy. But don’t think no one outside American borders has also noticed:

Lese: Debatte um Eine-Billion-Dollar Münze in USA geht weiter – Wirtschaft – Süddeutsche.de http://t.co/ULhPNfzu

January 9, 2013 5:53 am via HootBarReplyRetweetFavorite

@blicklog

Dirk Elsner

This includes the prominent Munich-based newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, as picked up by Dirk Elsner on his @blicklog feed.

The piece, by Jannis Brühl, is entitled “Heads or Tails,” and its essential function is to describe to German readers what is going on – or, rather, just what the heck is going on over there in the USA with this crazy-sounding coin-minting plan that, as Brühl puts it, beflügelt die Phantasie – basically, is mind-blowing. (more…)

Here is the judgment on the US debt-ceiling deal from Germany’s authoritative Die Zeit:

Als Präsident verloren, als Präsidentschaftskandidat gewonnen – Obama und die Einigung im Schuldenstreit http://j.mp/oHryqr (mh)

August 3, 2011 7:55 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@zeitonline_pol

ZEIT ONLINE Politik

That is, chalk up a loss for Obama as president, but a win for him as 2012 presidential candidate.

Why the defeat? Because “the compromise bore the signature of the Tea Party,” even as many among their Congressional representation voted against it out of a conviction that it did not cut spending enough. Still, in view of their intransigence this was the best that the responsible parties in the affair – the president, his Democratic Party, even a few moderate Republicans as might be left – could achieve to avoid the catastrophe of a debt default. (It’s unfortunate that the Die Zeit writer – as usual, unnamed here – either overlooked or just did not mention the 14th Amendment option, which would have defused the whole problem and prevented any future recurrence.)

But: “Whereas the President gave in, the polarized political climate creates new chances for presidential candidate Obama for 2012.” He has firmly captured the decisive middle-ground of American politics, including by the way he showed himself willing to defy his own party to get this compromise done, all of which should gain him votes even from moderate conservatives at the next election. And seizing that middle-ground also put him on top in the Gerechtigkeitsfrage, i.e. the justice/fairness question. The proper way to resolve America’s budget difficulties is both spending cuts and higher taxes, especially on the rich. Polls show voters overwhelmingly are of this opinion. Congress, apparently, is not, but Obama now has the opening to campaign in 2012 even as a sort of opposition politician to gain future opportunities to force this vision through.