Document Type
Article
Abstract
I propose means of immediately converting the Department of Treasury’s existing Treasury Direct system of freely available transaction accounts into a publicly administered digital savings and payments platform. A platform of this type is an essential public utility in any commercial society such as our own. It is additionally growth-promoting inasmuch as growth-tracking Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a measure of transaction volume, while transaction volume is a function of more efficient and inclusive transacting. As Congress seeks means of streamlining the payments infrastructure in a time of pandemic-induced crisis, the Treasury route recommends itself as the fastest way to digitize payments for 95% of our citizens and business enterprises. I also map means of migrating the Treasury architecture to the Federal Reserve System (Fed) over time once the crisis is past—as the “Greenback” paper dollar itself did in the late 19th and early 20th centuries—and include my draft Treasury Dollar Act as an Appendix.
Recommended Citation
Hockett, Robert
(2021)
"Digital Greenbacks: A Sequenced ‘Treasury Direct’ and ‘Fed Wallet’ Plan for the Democratic Digital Dollar,"
Journal of Technology Law & Policy: Vol. 25:
Iss.
1, Article 1.
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/jtlp/vol25/iss1/1