Posted on 02/13/2012 3:01:22 PM PST by GlockThe Vote
The Budget proposes to provide the Mint with greater flexibility in the material composition of coins to reduce its losses on some coins and the production costs associated with volatile metal prices. Additionally, the Budget increases the Mint's flexibility to match customer demand and supply by eliminating the provision requiring the Mint to produce Native American dollar coins in an amount equal to 20 percent of all dollar coins produced. Justification
The Mint's primary cost driver is the price of metal, a factor over which it has no control. Daily spot prices of copper and zinc, the Mint's two main metallic materials, have fluctuated in excess of 400 percent, and the price of nickel by 500 percent over the past 10 years.1 This contributes to volatile and negative margins on both the penny and nickel: recently, the penny has cost approximately 2.4 cents, and the nickel approximately 11.2 cents to produce.2
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Actually one could buy up a millions of nickel and sell them to the mint as raw materials and then use the proceeds to buy up 4 million nickels and sell them to the mint and
Government HATES competition!
Plastic money from China, availible from most dollar stores, one dollar will buy you 20.
Absolute genius. No one has ever thought of that before.
Hey, I’ve got another idea! Let’s inflate our car tires properly to save gas!
Our coins are as much “paper money” i.e fiat money as the dollar bills are.
Nickels are a much better bet, because you can just back up the pickup truck to the bank and store them all (good luck finding a bank who will provide all you might want).
Real Copper Pennies are better in a full blow financial apocalypse because they can be melted into useful things, nickels take more heat to work with. Plus Pennnies will be the new “base currency” as the smallest unit of measure and if they are in shortage you can exchange 4 for a nickel.
Really stocking up on any coins is a good idea for financial apocalypse.
It’s time once again to trot out my currency and coinage reform proposal.
Given that there has been ample inflation on the order of 10 since the last change, and we have an excessive array of confusing coins and low-value currency, it is time for a practical simplification.
First, denominations need to proceed in a proportional way without large value ratios or crowded ratios. The classic 1-5-10-50-100... progression with ratios of 2.0-5.0 is ideal as a minimum, with denominations of 2, 20, etc. being optional for important valuations.
Second, we want to avoid coins of such low value that they are more trouble than they are worth. Economic waste occurs with the extra time wasted dealing with needlessly small coins. A dime is worth less than a minute of labor at minimum wages, and no currency transaction requires anything smaller than this denomination. The penny and the half-cent served well as the smallest denominations when their values were that of today’s dime. (Note to any economic imbeciles: electronic transactions are often conducted in smaller units than our smallest coin, and that cash registers have been “rounding” - without bias up or down - to the nearest small coin for sales tax purposes for generations. Google sales tax rounding if you have doubts and read a few articles).
Third, we want to set the coin/currency transition at a practical level that avoids our wallets being overstuffed with small bills, or our pockets with too many coins. Coins should be suitable for purchases like a magazine, a coffee, a lunch, or a brief cab ride. Public buses should not need paper dollar readers.
Fourth, the ratio between the largest and smallest coin should be limited to a practical factor. Consider that the economy functions effectively with coins at 0.05, 0.10, and 0.25, with pennies treated as trash, and larger coins generally not used. That is a factor of 5 between the largest and smallest coin. A factor of 10-50 may be ideal, and a factor of 100 (as in actual current coinage) is excessive.
Fifth, we need bills of adequately high value for large cash purchases (consider the largest Euro note has a value of about 6.5 times that of the largest US note.)
Sixth, coins should be sized approximately proportional to their value for ease of recognition and use.
The proposal:
Coins:
$0.10 (slightly smaller than the current dime)
$0.50 (slightly smaller than the current nickel, larger than the penny)
$1.00 (slightly smaller than the current quarter dollar, larger than the nickel)
$5.00 (slightly smaller than the current half-dollar) Or it could be set at $2 to avoid overlap with a $5 note.
Currency Notes:
$5 (optional)
$10
$20 (optional)
$50
$100
$500
Our current 6 coins are replaced with 4.
Our current 7 notes are replaced with 4-6.
If you want to talk about making coins out of silver or gold, I’m even more enthusiastic:
$1000 gold coin (1 oz)
$500 gold coin (1/2 oz)
$100 gold coin (1/10 oz)
$20 silver coin (1 oz)
$10 silver coin (1/2 oz)
$2 silver coin (1/10 oz)
$1 copper or base metal coin (1/2 oz)
$0.50 copper or base metal coin (1/4 oz)
$0.10 copper or base metal coin (1/10 oz)
Incidentally, the product in my tagline covers the pennies and nickels issue fully, although that is a tiny portion of the info covered.
Here’s a thought, how about we strengthen the dollar by cutting spending and getting Obami out of office so we can grow the economy?
What a POS!!!!!!!!
[ Actually one could buy up a millions of nickel and sell them to the mint as raw materials and then use the proceeds to buy up 4 million nickels and sell them to the mint and...]
You would be thrown in the clink for selling coins as material to the feds, but no charges against the fed actually melting them...
How can they say the “profit” form coining the dollar coins that never go into circulation to offset the “loss” from printing (yes, printing- it is fiat money just like the $1 bill) pennies and nickels?
A continued debasement of the currency. Why don’t we just agree to conduct business in Cheerio’s.
What should be done is eliminate paper and metal money. Every peron would have a bank debit card into which all deposit are made and all expenses deducted.
Sure, if you can find somebody willing to pay a dime for a nickel. :)
Or wait 100 years before it becomes a collectable.
$3.8300 current scrap price for copper and scrap yards do the melting for you. I don't know if they accept U.S. coins though, it may be illegal to melt them. Nor do I know how many cents are in a pound.
Actually one could buy up a millions of nickel and sell them to the mint as raw materials and then use the proceeds to buy up 4 million nickels and sell them to the mint and...
Actually, it's counterfeiting.
And since the government has been counterfeiting since 1965, it's really no bigger deal now.
ML/NJ
He’ll be able to spend the recycle value right after he serves his sentence at Leavenworth for defacing US currency.
The law you think of refers to modifying with intent to pass as a larger denomination, or to remove valuable metal before spending.
Might as well just mold them out of plastic!
Plastic money for a plastic president.
I’ve been spending my nickels and pennies buying up a good supply of the most important metal as a hedge against a full-on economic collapse:
Lead.
My point exactly.
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