Best solution I have seen so far to avoid default if the debt ceiling is not raised.
The Debt Ceiling’s Escape Hatch
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Some have suggested, for instance, that the president could ignore the debt ceiling and direct the Treasury to issue more bonds to cover its obligations. But the Constitution is clear, and Mr. Obama agrees, that Congress alone has the power to authorize new borrowing. Other supposed solutions — like the notion that the Treasury Department could create a $1 trillion dollar platinum coin and deposit it in its own account at the Federal Reserve — are even more fantastical.
However, there is a plausible course of action, one that the president should publicly adopt in the coming weeks as his contingency plan should debt-ceiling negotiations falter. He should threaten to issue scrip — “registered warrants” — to existing claims holders (other than those who own actual government debt) in lieu of money. Recipients of these I.O.U.’s could include federal employees, defense contractors, Medicare service providers, Social Security recipients and others.
The scrip would not violate the debt ceiling because it wouldn’t constitute a new borrowing of money backed by the credit of the United States. It would merely be a formal acknowledgment of a pre-existing monetary claim against the United States that the Treasury was not currently able to pay. The president could therefore establish a scrip program by executive order without piling a constitutional crisis on top of a fiscal one.
To avoid any confusion with actual Treasury debt, and to be consistent with the law governing claims against the United States more generally, the scrip would not pay interest in most cases. And unlike debt, it would have no fixed maturity date but rather would become redeemable in cash only when the secretary of the Treasury was able to certify that there’s enough money available in the Treasury’s general fund to cover it. Finally, the scrip would be transferable, allowing financial institutions to buy it at a high percentage of its face value, knowing that the political crisis would almost certainly be resolved before long.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/opinion/an-escape-hatch-for-the-debt-ceiling.html
I hope that President Obama's team is making preparations in case they need to do this.
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it would seem the UK government used them in 1752, and still pays interest on them to this day.
But thanks for your insights! Who cares about pay grades. I say you're worth..more
On edit: all I wanted to ask with my previous post was: you said such securities CAN come with a provision that makes them callable. I just thought, well then don't include such a provision.
But then there is no way to retire them, should the need or desire come about.
Yeah, I read a Wiki entry on them because I had never heard the term either! But the first line or two of that entry makes perfect sense. Kind of a mix between a preferred share and an annuity.
Hell, there are a lot of questions I have about them as well. Your link says they trade. OK...over the counter or on an exchange? How would that secondary market be managed? What would the minimums be? Can any Joe Schmuck like me buy $1000 worth? Or do I have to buy them in blocks of a million? That sort of thing.
It is a subject that I find fascinating, to say the least. Bonds in general are a security that I find very interesting.
Edited to say, thanks very much for the compliment! 
