Paul Krugman: Coin or Not, Is There a Plan?

If I'd spent the past five years living in a monastery or something, I would take the Treasury Department's recent declaration that the trillion-dollar coin option is out as a sign that there's some other plan ready to go. Maybe the 14th Amendment, maybe moral obligation coupons or some other form of scrip, but something.

And maybe there is a plan. But as we all know, the last debt ceiling confrontation crept up on the White House because President Obama refused to believe that Republicans would actually threaten to provoke default. Is the White House being realistic this time, or does it still rely on the sanity of crazies?