US Pennies To Be Worth Five Cents?

Z-MaxX writes to point out Reuters coverage following up on last month's news that the US Mint has made it illegal to melt or export US coins in bulk, since the value of their constituent metals — in the case of pennies and nickels — now exceeds their face value. The new story quotes Francois Velde, senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, who thinks the new rules will not be enough — he believes that determined speculators are already piling up pennies. Velde suggests "rebasing" the penny to be worth five cents. Quoting Velde: "These factors suggest that, sooner or later, the penny will join the farthing (one-quarter of a penny) and the hapenny (one-half of a penny) in coin museums."

Comments

Coins

[JoshJ]

Why the hell are we still using coins and bills? Fiat currency is arbitrary anyway, can we please just move over to plastic entirely?

Re:Steel

[darjen]

Yeah, considering the USA is in a constant state of war, that would even make sense.

Since when has common sense ever stopped them?

Re:Inflation!

[delphi125]

You must be about 13 years old then. I seem to recall that back in the early 90s the USD:GBP exchange rate was about 2:1. According to http://eh.net/hmit/exchangerates/pound.php, the last time you could buy more than two dollars for a pound was 1975. Maybe try waiting until the viagra has worn out before spouting off drivel.

Re:Wouldn't happen under a libertarian government

[dave420]

Oh, by "libertarian" you mean selfish republican. Gotcha.

Well, just screw Oregon and New Hampshire, eh?

[Baloo Ursidae]

Because when something says 99 cents, it really is 99 cents. None of that offloading the sales tax onto the customer crap, since we don't have sales tax. And those pennies do add up: I fed myself on change pennies saved over time during the Bush depression...