Within days of each other, two announcements concerning the future of the US currency appeared in the popular press, and each avoided any mention whatsoever of the primary driver of the changes.
First was the announcement on November 26 from Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner that the U.S. Mint will begin removing pennies and nickels from circulation starting the first of the year, supposedly because they’re too expensive to make. It costs the mint nearly 5 cents to make each penny while it costs more than 16 cents to make a nickel. This is costing the mint a lot of money, an estimated $187 million last year alone.
Two days later CNN reported that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) called for the United States to stop printing one-dollar bills and switch instead to one-dollar coins. The GAO claimed that such a move could actually make the government some money:
They never learn. The Susan B. Anthony & Sacagawea Dollars were previous failed attempts to circulate dollar coins.
The simplest solution is the hardest: reverse devaluation until the old Silver Dollar's nominal face value is worth approx. its bullion content.
BTW, these are still available new, though in the form of investment objects rather than practical legal tender: www.usmint.gov/mint_programs/american_eagles/index.cfm?action=american_eagle_bullion
A D Justin wrote: Coins are reused hundreds of times. The cost of production is negligible over the life of a coin. Coins outlive their users.
True, but it's pretty sad if/when we as a country can no longer afford to pay the annual "replacement rate" of coins that are worn-out, damaged, or lost due to normal use.
I used to collect coins as a kid, watching them go from being made of silver and copper to nickel and zinc, due to the gradual fading over time of the value of our fiat currency with respect to actual metal values. I fully expected pennies to eventually be made of aluminum as the lowest denomination currencies of other countries now are. I guess eliminating them altogether saves even more money--I mean diverts more money to help pay for our government's increasing number of growing bureaucracies.
"First was the announcement on November 26 from Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner that the U.S. Mint will begin removing pennies and nickels from circulation starting the first of the year, supposedly because they’re too expensive to make. It costs the mint nearly 5 cents to make each penny while it costs more than 16 cents to make a nickel."
Coins are reused hundreds of times. The cost of production is negligible over the life of a coin. Coins outlive their users. False comparison.
"First was the announcement on November 26 from Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner that the U.S. Mint will begin removing pennies and nickels from circulation starting the first of the year, supposedly because they’re too expensive to make."
That's funny. Why then is it not too expensive to spend money not in existence?
This is all so much hokum in prep for the inflation/destruction of the dollar, needed to pay for Obamacare and other power-mad programs. The purpose is to make the dollar coin the new low value coin, so as to make dramatically increased costs for everything seem...not so bad. But Jim will be happy, cause women will allegedly get pre-natal care so they won't have to kill their babies.
Dr. Alan Cairns | 3/9/2009
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