What if the world’s most valuable piece of metal gets stolen before we can pay our nation’s bills? Or what if presumptive Treasury Secretary Jack Lew gets thirsty on the way to stash the $1 trillion trinket in the Federal Reserve, and he deposits the wrong coin in the soda machine? The coin return never works.

 

We asked former director of the U.S. Mint, and the guy who helped draft the law that makes the trillion-dollar-coin possible, Philip Diehl, how this could all go down – from the actual minting of the $1 trillion platinum coin, to what could happen if a super-villain snatched the sucker. (He doesn’t think Lew would mistakenly buy a soda with it.)