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Uncle Sam Does The Impossible: Loses $105 Million/Year Coining Money!
Submitted by NCPA via Contra Corner blog,
It costs the United States nearly twice as much to make a penny as that penny is actually worth, writes Christopher Ingraham for the Washington Post, reporting that it costs the government 1.7 cents to make a penny.
And pennies aren’t the only problem: it costs the government more than 8 cents to make a nickel.
A new report from the U.S. Mint reveals that it’s still not cost-effective to make pennies and nickels. Pennies and nickels used to be profitable in the early 2000s, says Ingraham, but the cost of producing the coins began rising in 2006 and has only gone up. While currency costs fell overall this year due to declining copper prices, the two coins still cost more than their face value. The rest of American currency is doing alright:
- It costs 5.4 cents to make a dollar bill.
- It costs 8.95 cents to make a quarter.
- It costs 3.91 cents to make a dime.
Ingraham writes that America could save $100 million each year simply by getting rid of the penny and the nickel, noting that Americans lost $105 million in 2013 due to their production.
While, alternatively, the United States could save money by changing coins’ metal makeup, such a move would require vending machines to be upgraded across the country, costing billions.
* * *
As a reminder, here is Kyle Bass' famous 'nickel' trade from 2011 (that is working even better now)...
On nickels:
He still owned stacks of gold and platinum bars that had roughly doubled in value, but he remained on the lookout for hard stores of wealth as a hedge against what he assumed was the coming debasement of fiat currency. Nickels, for instance.
“The value of the metal in a nickel is worth six point eight cents,” he said. “Did you know that?”
I didn’t.
“I just bought a million dollars’ worth of them,” he said, and then, perhaps sensing I couldn’t do the math: “twenty million nickels.”
“You bought twenty million nickels?”
“Uh-huh.”
“How do you buy twenty million nickels?”
“Actually, it’s very difficult,” he said, and then explained that he had to call his bank and talk them into ordering him twenty million nickels. The bank had finally done it, but the Federal Reserve had its own questions. “The Fed apparently called my guy at the bank,” he says. “They asked him, ‘Why do you want all these nickels?’ So he called me and asked, ‘Why do you want all these nickels?’ And I said, ‘I just like nickels.’”
He pulled out a photograph of his nickels and handed it to me. There they were, piled up on giant wooden pallets in a Brink’s vault in downtown Dallas.
“I’m telling you, in the next two years they’ll change the content of the nickel,” he said. “You really ought to call your bank and buy some now.”
Anyone want to buy a wheelbarrow?
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Canada got rid of their pennies, so AnalOG loaded up on pre-96 coppers!
So you make money melting down pennies?
The problem with abolishing low denominations of fiat currencies is that people on the street begin to ask questions.
Nickles bitchez!
We broke into one recycling centre and stole thousands of dollars worth of scrap metal. Sold it to another center across town, good score yay!
I logged in just to give you a down arrow...asshole.
Why you do to we? We had to repaint all the cans tho just so they never figure out whodunnit "KROOKIN' COLA". Smelly guy inside the counter say to we, "oh never seen Krookin' for?". "Eh, spend lots of time down in Mendez" says to he. Gives us the change to we and go to the drug store for some cough syrup mixing giggling to we's.
This is not a Kyle Bass trade, it's a Chumbawamba trade that Kyle Bass read about in a comment here on ZH years ago and copped for himself.
Credit where credit is due, gentlemen.
I am Chumbawamba.
A penny fer yer thoughts chumblez and a bit for your bunghole too.
Nickels, even in small quantities, are a real pain to move about and you need a strong or floor level shelf to stow a few stacks of bank boxes ($100.00).
Nonetheless, I have been Gresheming nickels and pre ’82 pennies for some years now.
I figure nickels will be the new quarter or more after the deflation/inflation cycle plays out.. plus, they do tend to help tone the arm muscles.
With a $16 trillion national debt, $100 million is nothing. This is a non-issue waste of time. Typical "conservative" rhetoric.
Let's fail to see the big picture. Reminds me of those Faux News stories where a researcher had shrimp on a treadmill on a $3 million government grant over a course of TEN years, and gasp what a waste of taxpayer money. Next story they are supporting a "surge" in Iraq to fight "insurgents" which costs $280 million a day to sustain. Look at what a great investment that was. ISIS is in charge, and Iraq is a bigger disaster and more of a risk to global stability than when Saddam was in power.
Conservatives are the biggest joke out there, because they don't "conserve" anything. They whine about black people on EBT getting $250 a month to feed their kids, yet are readily to defend 67 year olds who collect $900 a month social security ON TOP of their pension/retirement investments, then have the audacity to whine that the $900 doesn't go far.
DoD, Social Security, and Medicare make up the vast majority of the federal pie chart, yet righty tighties don't want any of those reduced because, hey, they collect from that. If we stop coining nickels, let the post office go bankrupt, let roads fall apart, abolish NASA, and stop giving the working poor subsidies to pay bills because $8 an hour doesn't go anywhere, then we can finance their pet projects with the "savings" that don't add up.
This is the type of crap the TEA party has turned into, from its libertarian roots.
The 9th doctor is my favorite but you're certainly not.
I can't vote up / down more than half of your comments. Guess which ones they are.
well....it's funny fighting over who thought of investing in coinage for their metal value first....since that problem has been around for thousands of years. But I'm with you...
I do two things....
1)every time I'm at a bank I take out $10 or $20 in nickels just to force the US Treasury to make more.
2)every time I get a penny I throw it in the street or on a sidewalk in protest so others will see how meaningless our currency has become. Sure, one out of every 20 is a pre-81 copper penny...my time is way more valuable than that and the point I'm making is more valuable than 1 cent.
TRASH PENNIES - HOARD NICKELS
I used to drop pennies on the ground as I exited a store, but a few years ago I started telling the cashier to 'keep the pennies'.
Now that I hate corporations, I take the pennies from them and drop the on the ground, usually in the parking lot. However, if it is a 'mom & pop' local shop, I still tell them to keep the pennies.
Why would a bitcoin turd be interested in anything like that?
to get a little high and get more bits?
"stole thousands of dollars worth of scrap metal. Sold it to another center across town"
...a born again Keynesian...
Why is the US Mint worried about a lousy hundred million or two? That really is pocket change. If they're so stuck for money they can go to the same cash register where sticky fingers Nuland found 5 billion. She squandered that for nothing, and shows no signs of letting up. No accounting charts, nothing. She only got busted by chance, and still nothing happened to her. She's still sniffing around for more easy money that's not in a vault welded shut.
105 Mil....
A fucking blip on the charts. Probably spent more than that crying about it!
At least the nickle has value.
Pick up a penny that has been in the dirt or sand and it is a white piece of unrecognizable zinc!
FU oBUMmer
Exactly. Besides the fact that the Federal Reserve wants to further debase coinage by having us carry around steel pennies (from the coming flood of oversupplied steel from China) and then lead into a completely digital currency by abolishing coins, they keep focusing the sheep on these millions of dollar "savings".
What about the billions we pay in interest, the hundreds of trillions in unfunded liabilities, and the quadrillions of derivatives? I know every hundied million counts, but sheesh.
Yes, it's a blip....but you have to understand how Public Sector Budgetting works.
For the US Treasury to go into a new budget year, and have to explain why their costs keep going up, even when metal prices are declining is a very tough proposition.
Secondly, as with all public sector funding....this is the same pool of money that people potentially receive raises from...so, the US Treasury, being a Public Sector parasitic organization would rather cannibalize the penny, and hand out raises than defend the penny.
But, TPTB don't want to blow the lid off the counterfeiting/debasement party going on at the FED and the BIG Bank Brotherhood. So, they'll keep throwing money at the Treasury to fund the negative ROI penny/nickel scharade.
At least ZHers can't claim the U.S. currency is backed by anything anymore. Zinc and nickel backed currencies are the new gottahave.
I moved to Australia in 1986, and they had 1 and 2 cent coins and a $2 bill at the time.
In 1984 they replaced the $1 bill with a coin. Worked great because they took the bills out of circulation, so no one had a choice but to use the coins.
While I lived there they did the same with the $2 bill (and $2 coin is smaller than the $1 coin), and they got rid of 1 and 2 cent coins all together.
The transition was smooth. No one questioned it.
Then all of the bills were changed to what felt like a paper/plastic material.
It's polyvinyl chloride money. PVC. At the very least, it's more durable than paper money. If a tear starts in it, it is easy to rip along that that tear, but so long is an AU bill remains untorn, it takes more strength to rip than most or all people have.
PVC bills means fewer losses for subsatnces going up we nose too.
Correct.
I take those new Canadian 20s home for friends everytime I visit.
The problem with abolishing low denominations of fiat currencies is that people on the street begin to ask questions.
Tis is an old - and ongoing story. I worked in operations for the NY Fed way back in the 80's.
Remember when businesses were giving bonuses if you brought in pennies? People were dumping pennines in jars at home because they wern't worth carrying THEN but businesses still weren't willing to round down to give nickels in change. NOW businesses routinely round off - they don't care - which says something about the real value of money these days.
Truth is that it costs a fortune to mint pennies and nickels - AND to print $1 bills. Classic money debasement scenario when coins are worth more for their (even base) metal value athan their purchasing power. KEEP IN MIND tht pennies aren't even the 95% COPPER pennies any more - THOSE are worth 1.92 cents for the metal alone. Nickels are still only worth 4.3 cents for their metal content. As for the old 90% silver and 91% gold coins...... THAT's another story..... A silver dollar - even at ridiculously low silver proces is worth over $12..... and a $20 GOLD piece is worth over $1100.
Is now is the time to ask about about all those DEFLATION memes?
You'd also be far better off eliminating the $1 bill - it lasts maybe 6 months and makes up more than half of the money that's printed. Sooner or later it's going to cost more in labor and materials to print a $1 bill than it's worth. Most other nations use coins for equivalent buying power denominations but it is politically unfeasable in the US. Makes it way too obvious that they've debased the currency.
and regarding debasement.....
There was one guy working in the coin vault at the Fed who came up with the dowpayment on his house when they (quietly) started pulling silver coins from circulation. He went around to every coin changer he could find and pulled all the silver coins he could (and the appreciaton was not all that much at the time he cashed in).
We're following a classic historical pattern of money debasement - best not to make it too obvious to the masses.
Have been doing some genealology work of late. Makes it VERY clear at just how much we've been screwed. In the late 1800's serious wealth was measured in thousands - rare was a house worth more than $1000. Jump ahead 75 years to the 1940 census which has all kinds of good info on wages and worth. If you made over $1000 a year then you were pretty comfortable. One guy making $5000 a year as a District Manager for a large company was living high on the hog - cruises to Europe, big house. Peons made hundreds a year. Rents were less than $30 a month for a house.
Post WWII - when prices started soaring, my grandparents paid $12,000 for a house - about 2 1/2 times annual earnings then. Twenty years later my parents bought the place for $29,000 - again about 2 1/2 times annual earnings. Then you had the soaring prices of the late 70's and its value shot up to over $200,000..... and it kept going. It sold near markte peak for close to $500,000 - a fairly ordinary (and OLD) 2 family place - albeit within commuting distance of NYC.
I was highest paid in my engineering degree major in the late 70's - made just over $20,000 a year. An accounting major friend was making $16,000 for a big firm. Now you pay a high school grad receptionist that. The new car that cost me $3500 back then (IF I could have afforded it) runs $30,000 or more now. My whole college degree cost less than ONE YEAR of what it costs for my kids. being 'old' - over 60 - I remember when candy bars cost a nickel - they're well over a dollar now. But that seems unbelievable to anyone born after the inflation of the 70's.
We are SOOOO Wemiared or Zimbabwed - to make a more current reference. Keep in mind that in the past when a nation had completely debased its money and lost confidence there was always some other 'safe haven' to run to. There is NO other option available to meet the demand that's going to arise if/when people start to panic over the dollar.
It seems like the current strategy is to destroy any and all possible competitors to the $US as a means of propping it up - a monetary 'Mutually Assured Destruction'. I wonder how long that can last?
At Big Box stores margins, every penny they handle loses them money.
They ought to price in pennies then round up for very small purchases and
down for larger.
Get rid of the penny, in a couple of years we can come out with little copper dollars.
We can even put Lincoln on them instead of that Sacajawea person.
"The problem with abolishing low denominations of fiat currencies is that people on the street begin to ask questions."
Well, think of it as another version of "Broken Windows": Good for the economy. Especially when key Commodities are being price-crushed. Right? ;-)
Loses? What price for freedom?
I used to think that someday we would be required to have a tattoo of a bar code for our VISA/AmEx/IRS/DHS/SNAP/Obamacare/PASSPORT/FEMA/Driver ID on our foreheads or hands.
Then, I got my driver's license renewed...
...the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves...
Got cash? DHS says you are possibly a terrorist, and should be reported.
If you aren't on this DHS list, then you aren't trying very hard.
"Mark of the Beast" can't be far off now. Just wait till after the Monetary Reset.
Note that TPTB are using all historic admonitions for disaster (Bible, 1984, Brave New World) or Sci-Fi tech toy ideas as INSPIRATION, not as a warning. Evil and the ever-burning need to rule over others is strong in these Global Imperialists.
. One (ring) for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
. In the Land of ____ where the Shadows lie.
. One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
. One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
Great metaphor for the One-World Currency that will lead to a One-World Government. Headed by ONE. Not chosen by God (i.e. a Noble, Higher Power), but the SELF-CHOSEN ONE.
No. Plus its illegal.
We never care about the illegal!
I would love to hear how you make money from melting down pennies that have been 97% zinc since 1982.
Canada pennies more pure. Canada pennies 1942 - 1996 are 98.0% copper. Yay!
They also happened to be the purest copper circulating coin in all of history.
Quiz: What was the purest circulating coin of any metal in all of history:
Ans: Canadian nickels to 1981 – 999 pure nickel, 100 = 1 lb.
So you make money melting down pennies?
No, we swim in them pretending they are physical satoshis.
This article seems to suggest couns are one use only. If a penny is minted it can be used endless times.
I think you missed the point.
Not really its a fiat currency. The value of the coins is nothing to do with what theyre made out of.
The idea of coins, originally, was that their metal content was value, now they are really just tokens.
Tokens? We use to plug we Anal!
annoying fuckhead!
I smell burning goat.
gh0atrider!
And what are Kyle Bass's storage costs/year on pallets of nickles in a Brinks vault?
This kind of article is to push for the abolition of paper and coin currency.
Then the banks will really have us trapped within the Matrix.
"So you make money melting down pennies?"
Nope. Part of the cost of making a penny is in the energy used to melt and stamp the zinc, and in the chemicals used to plate it in copper. Material wise, its not worth more than 1c. Yet.
Keep stacking.....Nickles.....Bitchez.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0GDcA-gqY4Coining metal is another way of price fixing a commodity (whatever the coin happens to be made of). Since you're enumerating a fixed quantity of the metal, you're actually placing a short bet on its value, but since money, in a fiat world, always depreciates over time, you end up on the wrong side of a trade. Mix in multiple coins made of different metals and you end up in even a tougher position, as value of metals fluctuates differently.
The best way of denominating physical curerncy, therefore, is by weight, like it was done for thousands of years. An oz. of gold or silver. If you simply measure mass and purity, then you do not automatically lock yourself into an exchange value. An oz. remain an oz. rain or shine. How much that oz. buys fluctuates and it's not a problem in the slightest.
I hear that Louie over in Trenton will make 'em for us for free....
BREAKING NEWS
US dollar has been revalued to $0.054
Just print more. Eventually you'll catch up to a profit......right.....RIGHT ???
Get to work Mr. Yellen !
OT, but am I going to set off some algo that triggers WWIII if I point out that crude is crashing again? Jus wunnerin'
Making cents makes no sense.
It takes a special breed of idiocy to keep on breedin'
We laugh at countries where printing dollar signs on the paper actually makes the paper lose value, but that's exactly where the US is right now with coins. The coin loses value when it's minted because it's illegal to melt it down as scrap.
Illegal for an individual to melt coins - not for the mint itself. So, there's nothing preventing them from absorbing the metal back and retrieving its appreciated value, which is exactly what they do.
I get his math, but how do you cash out? go to the scrap yard and tell them to ignore the shape of your recyclables, ignore that you aren't technically supposed to deface the coins? Is there a plan B? I like nickels as much as the next guy, but I typically get them 5 for a quarter.
I prefer full size pick up trucks myself.
Buy and hold until the coins are done away with. Once they are no longer legal tender, scrap them. The idea is the metals will become so expensive that coins just cannot be justified. We have a ways to go before that happens.
Lmfao, we'll make it up in volume... Or someting...
Since we're dealing with fiat currency anyway, the solution merely requires "fiat" (Decree): Issue a "New USD"
10 Old USD = 1 New USD
Problem solved. BTW, the National Debt is now a mere $1.8 Trillion New Dollars.
Alas, your $100k salary is now only $10k, but a new car costs $3k (not #30k), and a nice new house costs $40k (not $400k) in most parts of the country.
Never understood why a nickel needed to be so big and a dime so small. Why don't they just reverse the two of them? Problem solved.
When the dime still had silver in it, the size was appropriate.
Plus they put the face of Presidents on them.
Who says JP Morgan. et all didnt have a sense a humor.
Those billionaires took PENNIES seriously....
While, alternatively, the United States could save money by changing coins’ metal makeup, such a move would require vending machines to be upgraded across the country, costing billions.
wonder what else they are going to fuck up
Kyle Bass must have been born grafting, and I'm not trying to be mean. I think it's quite admirable how astute he is in spotting profits.
As he was being born, he grabbed a handful of pubes on the way out in anticipation of its value in the merkin trade.
Merkin and proud of it!
YHC-FTSE, Now I did get an LOL out of that one. Is that original to you?
Yes. It is an original. These things pop into my head unbidden every now and then :) <shame faced>
My preference is lead, brass and powder.
Cue the $1T platinum coin. Will fix everything everything quickly. Put Ben's face on it.
Current melt value of a nickel is only 0.0433 cents. If Bass is still sitting on that $1 million in nickels, he has lost some money.
No he hasn't. The whole point of storing nickels instead of nickel is that the nickels will never be worth less than 5 cents.
Aw man, maths suck.
Indeed. And for the US mint it would be a good deal if they could purchase his nickels at 7 cents per piece.
Even if your figure was right, he still has the face value of the nickel. Coins are the simplest option to hold. But that might be a little too much for you get your head around today.
He won't have lost "money". He can always sell them for a nickel each. He may well have lost purchasing power though.
That's what I'm talkin' 'bout.
And he has to store the things, too.
ha, just think if the coins were actually gold and silver..... they'd be screaming bloody murder
Just think if there was a paper ETF market for nickels - how no one would know the real value of the underlying physical...
I got paid by a customer last week in coins, 40$ worth. Was glad to take them. Half dollars, quarters and nickles. Must have weighed 5lbs.
I bet your pimp was pissed!
j/k
$105 Million a year is chump change. Lol. We are America and we have a printying press !!!!
And a coin forge. Will they take nickles and pennies for the loss balance?
We don't know what Bass' storage fees are--and I suspect they're considerable, but the trade is brilliant if the storage fees are low.
Why in Christ's name do you sophisitcat.....knowlege.......really really smart ones not understand, "Losses", and "losses"??
If Kimmy spends 106,000,000 on herpes sore palliatives for herself, that $106,000,000 is not "LOST", it is in the hands of doctors, pharmacists, and alert sites she should address to warn all her previous lovers. The doctor will buy a Mercedes, the Pharmacist will get that new Honduran Maid with the big tits, supple skin and no back talk.
Paul Simon wrote about this decades ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIWBl7HE4Ko
A real loss is when the government doesn't buy the coins and saves $106,000,000 and then burns up the FRNs in the Senate fireplace.
All spending is good whether for investments in a Porn Website featuring Live Nude College Sorority girls, returning huge profits, or spending on coins that are worth less than the cost of producing them.
Follow the money or better yet, get out in front of where it will land next, grab as much as you can as it moves thru the python and repeat.
When money stops flowing is when the worry warts have made their day made.
"The more and more I understand, the less and less I know".
Do you break a lot of windows?
I have.
Windows 8.1, W8, W Prof, and W97.
Broke all of them, with pleasure.
This OS has retarded civilization to paleolithic times.
gee...I wonder if they'd ever consider doing away with cash altogether...in the interest of saving money of course...
So he can put the $200,000 towards his storage costs...
new normal...
I've been stacking nickels since the mint is looking at making new nickels out of copper plated zinc, similiar to the modern penny. Debasement, just like the fall of the Roman empire...
http://fortune.com/2014/01/15/is-america-ready-for-a-brown-nickel/
The melt value of a penny or a nickel is still less than face. A nickel is worth 4.33 cents in melt, a penny is worth 0.56 cents in melt. Out source it to China and make money. The Chinese counterfeits are pretty good btw.
http://www.coinflation.com/
The government fucks up anything it touches.
They should learn to print on paper and profit more!
The other day I received a 1935 $1.00 Silver Certificate in change from the liquor store.
So. We wouldn't wanna employ huge numbers of people doing worthless shit, now would we?
The problem is NOT that it costs more to make a penny and a nickle, the REAL problem is that the Dollar is WORTH-LESS.
Think about it, the cost of EVERYTHING has gone up, materials, labor, etc. It's been INFLATED so much that our smallest coinage is now considered "too expensive" to produce. So obviously, we have to do away with it, right? WRONG!
Let's just devalue the dollar by a factor of ten. Suddenly the loaf of bread is 25-30 cents, a gallon of milk is 58 cents. Extra value meal is 69 cents. OF course your pay goes from a minimum wage of 7.50 to 75 cents but it still buys the same. Suddenly those pennies that cost 1-point-six cents now only cost 16-hundreths of a cent! A nickle is 8 tenths of a cent!
Of course, those who SAVE money or have money stashed away, see thier savings rise by a factor of 10. All those penny pinchers are rewarded for thier due diligence and we don't have to change, a thing.
Mint starts making seniorage again, contributing to the government coffers and suddenly, our labor is not only Affordable, it's CHEAP! Mexicans leave the country in droves while business floods in, knowing they can get things done cheaply and WITH American labor!
But no, well spend billions to drop a coin, redenomninate the rest of the coinage (the dime will be the new penny) finally use the dollar (like a dime) and maybe come up with a new 5 dollar coin (the new 50 cent piece) and keep on inflating until we colllapse under the weight of this inflationary foolishness.
I think you mean revalue. They have been devaluing the dollar for 101 years, hence the high prices.
With Uncle Scam it's all about enriching the banksters.
That Kyle Bass trade has been a loser.
If it had a melt value of $0.068 then and $0.043 now, how is that a profitable trade?
If the US drops nickel from the coin, does that increase demnd for the metal to increase th elt value?
It is a can't lose trade, other than opportunity cost. Of course, it should be financeable at something near the fed funds rate. But there must be storage costs.
How is .05 less than .05?
Note the last paragraph. I stated that it is a can't lose trade, except for financing and storage costs.
However, as metals speculation, requiring melt value to increase for a gain, it has not profited since it was first proposed. Several years of storage costs can eventually become a meaningful cost. In order for this to really payoff, the USD collapse must happen in the time frame of an adult investing lifetime.
looks like the best return is to make dollars. only 5.4 cents to make a dollar?? no brainer, i mean we could be making a fortune here! debt problem solved!
Or they could stop debasing the currency, or dimes and quarters are next.
Well it's been fifty years since they blazened JFK's profile on the last "silver" coin. Pennies were debased in 1982. It took 32 years for that move to degrade to a 70% loss per unit. That's best seen as the cost of doing business, i.e. to buy additional time for the fed's game to play on.
Like the meth addict whose teeth start falling out, what the heck, it's only a couple at a time, one can still drink nourishment.
If our Executive really wanted to be useful, he'd instruct his Treasury Department to begin printing US Dollar notes like JFK. Now THAT was a Constitutional Scholar.
> Now THAT was a Constitutional Scholar.
maybe that's partly why Lee Harvey Oswald found him so offensive...
Lee Harvey Oswald found him so offensive...
Partly nothing, that's exactly why Johnson, er, Oswald found him so offensive. Lady Bird's investment bankers could never stand the MIC to come between the US' citizen's profits and growth.
Same as it's always been.
jmo.
Actually, I keep waiting for the next country to step up to the plate and seriously adopt their country's future to the pattern the US' founders laid. I suspect it would replace the Swiss' previous "Safe Haven" designation in a heart beat.
Batter Up!
Feel the inflation.
It is illegal to melt pennies and nickels, but what happens if there is a horrific accident in the shed and the coins get unintentionally melted by the fire?
Jet fuel, er, garage fires can't melt
steel, er nickle.
Gasoline, Diesel or Kerosene (aka Jet Fuel) can NOT melt a steel shed. Can't even soften it enough to make it collapse.
But they can melt tall skyscrapers, made of steel structural girders, and cause them to collapse so fast, as in free-fall. I can't be sure, but I think there was a famous case of this happening in NYC, back in 2001. Sept., I think.
Everybody here keeps saying the dollar is domed but it keeps going up in value.... I agree it don't make sence but the fact is the dollar is the best currency out there....
Only as long as there is strong demand for it. But, like all commodities, once the demand goes away so will its value. Its real value was established by Nixon in the 70's when Kissinger orchastrated a deal with the Saudi's to use it as the exclusive currency for the sale of oil (Tricky Dicky did a few things right). That status is now in serious jepoardy as many countries (China, Russia, Iran, Brazil) are going away from the dollar when trading certain commodities such as oil. As the need for dollars obviates, those dollars will come home to roost. When that happens, look ot below, because there are a shi!load of dollars floating around the world.
I read about this a couple of years back and figured it was a pretty good idea. Didn't have a couple of mill laying around so I went to my bank and bought a few hundred dollars worth. That's still a shi!load of nickels (heavy too), but I figure it won't be too long before a nickel is worth more than a dollar. People will be amazed at what they will be able to buy with a real nickel in a few years. Still pulling all the nickels out of my change and throwing them in a box.
You get some weird looks from the bank people as you tote out your $100 boxes of nickels and then come back for the next one. Those fuckers are heavy, too.
Get rid of fiat and use transparent, decentralized crypto currencies. :)
While, alternatively, the United States could save money by changing coins’ metal makeup, such a move would require vending machines to be upgraded across the country, costing billions.
You're not thinking the new "normal". Remember that broken window?
It won't be "costing" billions, it will generate billions in wages and new equipment (made in the far east of course).
ahhhhh.... every cloud (ad nauseam)
There is no need for silver and gold coinage, the coins used now for circulation work just fine.
You gotta wonder why the US Treasury mints those coins with no silver in them at all. If they woiuld mint coins with ninety percent silver, they wouldn't need to have so many of them out there, but who cares what they do, let them do it.
I do recommend buying silver at the price it is now and forget about all those cupro nickel steel coins out there. If you save them at all, trade them in for paper money from time to time, but don't get rid of them all.
Have a bank account with a few dollars in it, a hundred, nothing more, don't deposit money into banks at all except for paying bills.
Keep cash and buy silver. If you want gold, buy gold, but I have only junk gold and no coins.
Although, I have no idea what happened to any of it. I was out treasure hunting and lost it all somehow. Haven't a clue where any of it might possibly be.
I'll bet they could use a 3D printer and make nickels for about twenty bucks each, but then you could put your own face on them, too, like you can with your own graphics and stamps.com, where it probably costs you twenty cents in ink besides the postage amounts.
I remember when he first published this, so I have about twenty bucks in nickels sitting in old pickle jars and whatnot, waiting until they become collectors items. Seemed like a good idea at the time.
But right now, it looks like the mint couldn't produce pennies and nickels out of much of anything for less than face, except maybe plastic, like metal-filled bakelite, might be able to make some two-toned or even full-color coins, even engrave unique IDs on each? Nah, unique IDs would raise the production cost too much, but could probably change an ID daily if there were any point to it, like the series numbers on paper bills only moreso.
Someone gets paid to make those coins. And that someone pays Senators bribe money. Just be happy they are not introducing the 1/2 cent made of solid silver and twice as big as a quarter. The goal appears to be to hemorrhage money in any way possible that will return in the form of campaign contributions.
Since they're basically making our coins out of recycled beer cans these days, the fact that they STILL lose money minting them tells you what they're really worth...
You're better off accumulating Chuck E Cheese tokens...at least you can play some of their arcade games.
> GATA wants free and transparent markets and limited and accountable government
heh...yea...I'm sure this is just over the horizon...
Abolish the sales tax and there will be exponentially less demand for pennies...
No,,, we'll just round up to the next nickel... That'll prove real cost savings for the government.
I spent 3 yrs in Germany in the mid 80s. The US military there banned pennies. They rounded proices to the nearest nickel. It was great then and as money has less value now, what's the big deal? Get rid of the penny. I have a 3 gallon basket 1/2 full of them that are barely worth the effort of hauling to my local coinstar machine.
First they debase the currency to where it's too expensive to coin it then complain they're losing money! Gee, I guess the answer will be digital, but I have confidence in the parasite banksters and financial leaches. They'll debase it enough even where digital will be too expensive!
My nephew is a manager at Walmart, so I gave him a call. The cheapest thing in the store is 47 cents. That plus tax comes out to 51 cents. It's not just pennies and nickels. There is nothing you can buy with a dime or quarter either. The treasury dept is stupid beyond belief. We're a decade and a half into the 21st century and our illustrious .gov is still in the 1950s. Let's give them a big round of applause for sucking us dry.
Oh for crying outloud, $100 million is a freakin' rounding error. It's not going to "save" the US anything. until you start talking about cutting a trillion dollars, this is all just gnat swallowing.
This whole issue, of government’s “losing” money in minting coins, illustrates just how brainwashed the populace is when it comes to understanding what is real money.
Firstly, the best money is made of the monetary metals: gold, silver, copper, nickel. Thousands of years of human history are witness to this fact.
1.The mint does not “lose” money minting coins. That’s what they want you to think. What they are really saying is this: “we would much prefer to manufacture $100 bills with a profit margin of 99.999% rather than pennies or nickels with negative margins. Notice the discussion never extends to the profit they make on printing bills, that would invite questions on the very nature of money itself. The irony is that the most honest products the mint produces (ie. intrinsic value closest to face value) are also it’s lowest margin.
2. The reasoning that hoarding coins is a bad bet because it’s illegal to melt them for scrap – that argument is pure propaganda. Let me ask this: would you melt down a silver eagle to recover the silver it? Of course not, it would be idiocy because it’s already in it’s best possible form – it is fractionalized, it’s weight and purity are officially stamped on it, and it is widely accepted for what it is. Same logic applies to melting copper or nickel coins – why would you want to? They are ready to be used as is (as money). And they will be, when everyone’s electronic wealth gets fried, and all the 1000x margined and financialized BULLSHIT goes to zero.
3. Storage costs. Yeah, I heard those kind of arguments when silver was at $8/oz – “it would cost so much to store my stash, no thanks, I’ll pass.” If storage costs are so important to you, then open up a no-fee-chequing account at a Cyprus bank.
4.Currently, the cupro-nickel 5 cent coin is the ONLY legal tender in the USA that is honest, sound money. The fact that the regime wants it eliminated says it all. Just like their suppression of gold and silver prices, they want NO competition to their counterfeit scrip.
Oh, for fuck's sake. How about we look at the other side of this dumbass trade.
Using this idiot reporter's same logic, considering it takes $0.0504 to make every $1.00 bill, and last year we produced 1.79 billion dollar bills, the US Treasury "earned" $1.7 billion dollars.
During the same time period, we minted 1.4 billion quarters, "earning" the Treasury another $231 million dollars over face value.
And with the lowly dime, produced at 2.1 billion per year, we "earned" yet another $128 million.
So, by this idiot's logic, the US Government easily "earned" 10x the amount of money it "lost" producing pennies and nickels on the year.
So what the FUCK is the point of all this bitching every year? The currency is what it is. Stop trying to fuck with it.
They keep bringing the issue up, because they want a public outcry against these loses to give them a mandate to eliminate these "money losing" coins.
It worked up here in Canada, in 2012 the penny was eliminated, but not until undergoing successive debasements over the prior 2 decades, during which time the mint ran an "alloy recovery program" to harvest the metals from retired coins, a politically correct term to mask OUTRIGHT DEBASEMENT.
Of course! All that steel that was scurried out of New York before any forensics could investigate it. China has it.
They laughed at the people who started buying and stashing silver US dimes, quarters, half dollars, and silver dollars back in 1964 too.