Sign of the times: Back to Steel Pennies & Nickels?
Here’s a new spin on debasing the currency. According to this story, a Congressional bill due for a vote soon would instruct the US Mint to start stamping pennies and nickels in steel instead of their current alloys.
The cost of a penny is currently over one cent (1.26 cents) and a nickel costs 7.7 cents to mint - 50% more than it’s worth.
The rising cost of metal commodities is to blame. Copper is near record high prices and zinc costs four times what it did in 2003.
So not only in the Fed debasing the currency, so is Congress, in a manner of speaking.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:10 am
This seems like the perfect opportunity to STOP producing the penny. They did that in New Zealand a while back. All cash purchases are rounded up or down to the nearest nickel. Plastic purchases (debit / cc) are still charged to the penny. It works really well, saves the government a lot of money in producing coins, and hasn’t really affected people’s spending (i.e. they’re not paying more or less because of the rounding).
May 7th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Outdoorgrrl - There’s been a push to do that every year for many years. It’s just not politically feasible here in the States. Public opinion polls routinely show less than 20% of people in favor of it.
May 9th, 2008 at 11:37 am
True, it will never work in states. Well not at least for now. Rounding off only costs customers more.