The Washington Post has an opinion article about the mistakes Congress is making keeping both paper dollars and metal dollars in circulation. Michael Zielinski (no, I don’t know who he is either) writes that the coins are piling up in great mountains at federal reserve banks because Congress ordered their production while people in the real world are shunning the coins in favor of the paper dollars.
He suggests they drop the paper dollar as many countries have. Coins last so much longer that the US Mint could have saved a gob of paper dollar printing costs if it had switched to coins long ago. He actually doesn’t phrase it that way because he assumes the future will be the same as the past, while ignoring parts of that past. I’m altering the phrasing, without changing his intent, because it makes a really big difference.
One obvious reaction he misses is to let the people earning and spending this money decide which form they prefer. If the customer loves paper, let them use paper. The marketplace currently votes strongly for that option and my Libertarian instincts nudge me in that direction.
However, there is a much more amusing way to look at this. Using the lovely information provided by Coinflation.com, you can see that the melt value of the metal in 1982 and older pennies are worth 2.6 cents, current nickels are worth 6 cents and presidential dollar coins melt down to 6.7 cents worth of metal.
Nearly all of you expect hyperinflation to kick in in the not-too-distant future. (I know that cuz you are still reading my “The Sky Is Falling” blog).
I think there would be a delicious irony if the US Congress who gave the US Dollar to the banksters of the feral reserve replaced the paper dollar with a coin as a cost cutting measure. Then that coin, due to their runaway dollar production quickly became worth more in melt value than the [toilet] paper it replaced. Shortly thereafter, it became worth more than their five dollar bill, and soon their fifty.
Not that I think the puppetmasters will allow this. They have their hearts, frigid chunks of obsidian that they are, set on a new world currency. No way are they going to allow us additional widespread proliferation of brass, zinc or copper coins, not to mention gold or silver. But dang, it will be a lot of fun to watch and see how they squirm out of this one.
I’m going to be rooting for the coin, much as I avoid them today in everyday commerce. People shunning hundred dollar bills while exchanging previously shunned one dollar coins for products and services would be chocolate applesauce cake for my brain.