US Treasury to strip pennies, nickles of valuable metal
Uncle Sam, recycler
US Treasury to strip pennies, nickles of valuable metal
Joseph N. DiStefano
US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner hopes to strip copper and other valuable metals from the Philadelphia and Denver coining lines that mint America's small change, as a cost-cutting measure.
"Currently, the costs of making the penny and the nickle are more than twice the face value of each of those coins," Geithner told the House Appropriations Committee in this testimony today. Treasury is pushing a law that would give it the freedom "to change the composition of coins to utilize more cost-effective materials." He didn't specify in his testimony if that means plastic or aluminum.
The U.S. Mint says nickels are currently 75% copper, 25% nickel. Pennies are copper-plated zinc.
Geithner says other money-producing manufacturing and administrative changes "will save more than $75 million" starting next year. Employment at the Philadelphia mint is around 385, down from 548 in 2003, US Mint spokesman Mike White told me.
That follows last December's decision to stop minting dollar coins after 1.4 billion piled up, unused, in Federal Reserve vaults. Use the existing coins before minting new ones, Geithner ordered. He said the switch "will save taxpayers $50 million" yearly in manufacturing and storage costs. The Mint employs 1,800, mostly at the Philadelphia and Denver mints and two smaller plants in San Francisco and West Point, N.Y. Together the mints produced around 7.4 billion coins last year, down from a peak of 27 billion in 2000, due to lower demand for pocket change as more Americans use debit cards, and to the end of popular state-quarter and other special coin programs.
Geithner is a joke. How many seconds of interest would $75 million cover on the debt he and his boss President Owe-Bama have run up?— Wilhelm Von Humboldt- while we're on the subject how about we quit making the penny entirely?— phillipkatz
- Let's get rid of the dollar bill and use the coin instead. Also, let's use the $2 bill.— jeromez48
- phillpkatz- the sales taxes in all relevant states would have to be revised (probably upward) to eliminate the penny in cash transactions. For that matter, ever just get one gallon of gasoline and try to get the one-tenth of one cent back?— gb
- You know it's a declining country when their money is basically worthless,no intrinsic value whatsoever.
Tie their worthless money to a real product like a loaf of bread and watch how many plastic quarters you'll need to get yourself a loaf.
— oakster 
The penny should only be used to tax each trade on the stock exchange, e.g 23 cents per each bond, each future's contract, each derivative, etc. But, it should be a intangible currency that only exists electronically not as specie.- Illinois won't allow the penny to disappear. No plastic money.— palmyra21
