Undergrad borrows, destroys Treasury's platinum coin for experiment, causes US debt default

WASHINGTON (CJ Press) -- In a surprise incident sure to roil financial markets around the world, the Treasurer of the United States could not find the recently struck one trillion dollar platinum coin in time to avert default on the national debt. The culprit was an undergraduate intern in the U.S. Treasury's laboratory, who was looking for a platinum and borrowed it to run a variety of chemistry experiments.

Ms. Rosa Gumataotao Rios was about to leave for her flight to deposit the coin at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, when she when she noted that the fabled one trillion dollar coin was not in her desk drawer. Ms. Rios asked her assistant where the coin was, and he did not know. Her assistant did mention that he saw "that stinking intern" skulking around her office.

Ms. Rios stormed into the Treasury lab to demand the coin back, but she was dismayed to find the coin being smashed apart for use in a hydrogenation experiment. "I need it to reduce this olefin! It says I need platinum powder -- and my poster is due for tomorrow's seminar!" whined the student. Unsurprisingly, the student had also torn apart the laboratory's electrolysis apparatus and emptied the reservoirs into the sink. Without the coin, the United States defaulted on its sovereign debt for the first time in its history.

The Treasury of the United States has resorting to ordering another platinum coin blank from Johnson-Matthey, with the hope that the office has enough purchase orders available.