The trillion dollar coin

Is it April first already? There has been quite a lot of talk about the US producing a £1 trillion dollar platinum coin to help it bypass its Fiscal Cliff spending difficulties, even the mainstream media seem to be reporting it, in the UK the BBC joining in.

A campaign is gathering pace on the American left to mint a single platinum coin and assign it a face value of a thousand billion dollars as a neat way of resolving the impending row between Congress and the White House over the US debt ceiling.

A Democratic congressman has endorsed the idea and a Republican one has introduced a bill to block it. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20954258

So here's the question.  If it really was that easy why not just mint 20 and then the US could wipe out all its current debt and have a nice surplus as well.  In fact, the amount could be any figure.

The workaround would come from exploiting a 1997 law that allows the Treasury to “mint and issue platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coins in accordance with such specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations, and inscriptions as the secretary, in the secretary’s discretion, may prescribe from time to time.”

The idea was that a secretary might authorize the creation of a commemorative eagle coin, for instance, to be put on sale for collectors. But the law inadvertently gave the Treasury secretary the power to mint, say, a $1 trillion coin, or even a $5 trillion coin, or even a $1 quadrillion coin.

Rather than selling it, he might deposit it at the Federal Reserve. Presto! The shiny new asset would erase a trillion dollars in debt liabilities. 

 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/business/a-trillion-dollar-coin-brings-a-jackpot-of-jests.html?_r=0

Surely they haven't run out yet of paper printing inflation making ideas that this would be taken serious? If this ever happened, you wonder how long it would be before they felt the need for that $1 quadrillion coin.