Quote :

" WASHINGTON (AP) -- Further evidence that times are tough: It now costs more than a penny to make a penny. And the cost of a nickel is more than 7½ cents. Prices for copper, zinc and nickel have some in Congress proposing steel-made pennies and nickels. Surging prices for copper, zinc and nickel have some in Congress trying to bring back the steel-made pennies of World War II and maybe using steel for nickels, as well. Copper and nickel prices have tripled since 2003 and the price of zinc has quadrupled, said Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Illinois, whose subcommittee oversees the U.S. Mint. Keeping the coin content means "contributing to our national debt by almost as much as the coin is worth," Gutierrez said. A penny, which consists of 97.5 percent zinc and 2.5 percent copper, cost 1.26 cents to make as of Tuesday. And a nickel -- 75 percent copper and the rest nickel -- cost 7.7 cents, based on current commodity prices, according to the Mint. That's down from the end of 2007, when even higher metal prices drove the penny's cost to 1.67 cents, according to the Mint. The cost of making a nickel then was nearly a dime. Gutierrez estimated that striking the two coins at costs well above their face value set the Treasury and taxpayers back about $100 million last year alone. A lousy deal, lawmakers have concluded. On Tuesday, the House debated a bill that directs the Treasury secretary to suggest a new, more economical composition of the nickel and the penny. A vote was delayed because of Republican procedural moves and is expected later in the week. Unsaid in the legislation is the Constitution's delegation of power to Congress "to coin money [and] regulate the value thereof." The Bush administration, like others before, chafes at that. Just a few hours before the House vote, Mint Director Edmund Moy told House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, that the Treasury Department opposes the bill as "too prescriptive" in part because it does not explicitly delegate the power to decide the new coin composition. The bill also gives the public and the metal industry too little time to weigh in on the new coin composition, he said. "We can't wholeheartedly support that bill," Moy said in a telephone interview. Moy said he could not say whether President Bush would veto the House version in the unlikely event it survived the Senate. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colorado, who is retiring at the end of the year, is expected to present the Senate with a version more acceptable to the administration in the next few weeks. The proposals are alternatives to what many consider a more pragmatic, but politically impossible solution to the penny problem: getting rid of the penny altogether. "People still want pennies, which is why we're still making them," Moy said. Even Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson acknowledged in a radio interview earlier this year that getting rid of the penny made sense but wasn't politically doable -- and certainly nothing he is planning to tackle during the Bush team's final months in office. In 2007, the Mint produced 7.4 billion pennies and 1.2 billion nickels, according to the House Financial Services Committee. Other coins still cost less than their face value, according to the Mint. The dime costs a little over 4 cents to make, while the quarter costs almost 10 cents. The dollar coin, meanwhile, costs about 16 cents to make, according to the Mint."

5/7/2008 8:39:10 AM

Why don't we just stop using the penny. Round bills to the nearest 5 cents. I could only imagine the penny costs businesses a bunch of money each year. Take the intergral of the [time an employee has to shuffle around or count pennies] x [hourly wage] x [total employees] and i am sure the costs adds up.

5/7/2008 9:37:02 AM

or just get rid of fiat currency

5/7/2008 9:38:13 AM

100 million dillars is a small price to pay for us being able to use coins rather than random buttons and rocks and shit

5/7/2008 9:38:30 AM

RAWR RAWR RAWR

KING DOUCHEBAG JR HERE

I HATE ALL CURRENCY THAT ISNT PEGGED TO THE SILVER STANDARD

5/7/2008 9:38:37 AM

Fiat money is where it's at. IN GOD WE TRUST

5/7/2008 9:39:34 AM

MY MONEY IS BACKED BY OUR INVISIBLE SKY DADDY!!!

YEAH!

5/7/2008 9:41:13 AM

This is comparable to all the politicians in congress leasing luxury cars on our tax dollar. The more and more I get involved in politics, the more and more I hate big government.

5/7/2008 9:46:54 AM

no mention of the fact that it costs waaaaay less than a dollar to make paper money

so that 100 million is made up with bills

5/7/2008 9:59:25 AM

There is absolutly no practical reason for us to use the penny.

5/7/2008 10:34:57 AM

RON PAUL GOLD STANDARD

5/7/2008 10:37:14 AM

And the Treasury keeps trying to ram those damn dollar coins down our throats.

We don't want them! Guys don't want a bunch of clangy change weighing us down!

In the gov't's wisdom..they thought they merely had to change the picture on the coin. It doesn't matter who you put on the coin...we don't want to use them!

How much money are we wasting producing and storing a coin that nobody (except the gambling industry) wants?

5/7/2008 11:08:07 AM

Quote :

"RON PAUL GOLD STANDARD"

5/7/2008 11:13:27 AM

Actually i like the idea of dollar coins.

Just reach in my pocket and pull out a coin versus going through the hassle of fishing for paper bills in my wallet.

5/7/2008 11:16:43 AM

other countries will go up to the $5, $10 range in coins

[Edited on May 7, 2008 at 11:26 AM. Reason : 30 dolars in change is a bitch]

5/7/2008 11:26:13 AM

Quote :

"or just get rid of fiat currency"

5/7/2008 11:51:36 AM

[quote]The bill also gives the public and the metal industry too little time to weigh in on the new coin composition, he said.[/quote[

Now, I hardly trust the government to find it's own ass, but what reason is there for the "metal industry" to weigh in on the composition of our coins?

5/7/2008 12:03:40 PM

Quote :

"RON PAUL GOLD STANDARD"

5/7/2008 12:09:13 PM

Quote :

"There is absolutly no practical reason for us to use the penny."

Ahem.

5/7/2008 12:17:51 PM

I really wonder how different the actual bona fide value of all the dollars and coins is from the numbers bandied about by central banks.

I bet it's way more than $100 million.

5/7/2008 12:20:04 PM

^^ dont get it

5/7/2008 12:39:10 PM

^ Really?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_loafer

5/7/2008 12:41:06 PM

Quote :

"Why don't we just stop using the penny. Round bills to the nearest 5 cents."

They did this in Peru, and while I was down there I recall a newspaper article about how the move had cost them tens of millions of dollars because of rounding.

5/7/2008 1:11:16 PM

100 million?


since when has 100 million been a lot of money anyways? we spend that in less than a day in iraq

5/7/2008 1:15:55 PM

I think if we were to get rid of the penny, proprietors will find ways to price their products to where consumers must round up more than we would round down. I think getting rid of the penny would, in the end, cost consumers more money.

And think about the gas pump. It would pump gas in increments of 5 cents.

5/7/2008 1:22:35 PM

It would completely fuck the 99 cent menu.

5/7/2008 1:24:02 PM

Companies should just start including the tax in their prices so they can round out the numbers.

5/7/2008 1:25:50 PM

Quote :

"And think about the gas pump. It would pump gas in increments of 5 cents."

Then why is gas listed to the nearest tenth of a cent now.

5/7/2008 1:29:53 PM

We should go back to using 1/2 cent pieces.

[Edited on May 8, 2008 at 1:59 PM. Reason : j/k]

5/8/2008 1:58:48 PM

Quote :

" Then why is gas listed to the nearest tenth of a cent now."

yeah i always found this annoying; gas is always 3.679 instead of 3.68.

5/8/2008 2:06:48 PM

well who would you buy from?
the guy selling it for 3.679 or the guy selling it for 3.68?

most people don't pay attention to the .009, so it would look a whole cent different.

5/8/2008 2:37:16 PM

depends on which one is more convenient for me to pull into. I'm smart enough to automatically do the rounding in my head.

Kinda like all those infomercials


"GET XYZ product for UNDER $100!!!!!!! call know to get XYZ for $99.95""

ZOMG i'm getting XYZ for under 100!!!

[Edited on May 8, 2008 at 2:41 PM. Reason : a]

5/8/2008 2:40:19 PM

right, but that other "9" is so small, 99.9 percent of people don't pay attention to it.

5/8/2008 2:41:53 PM

i am not contributing to this problem. i use debit and credit cards literally every transaction i make

5/8/2008 6:38:24 PM

if i had a million dollars i'd go exchange it for nickles as an investment

5/8/2008 7:46:51 PM

how the hell would that be an investment?

are you going to resell them for more than a nickle a piece?

5/8/2008 8:02:22 PM

try this thread again

and this time, let's hold the dumbshit responses.

5/8/2008 8:17:30 PM