Posted on 12/13/2011 1:22:59 PM PST by SMGFan
Vice President Biden announced Tuesday that the U.S. Mint would discontinue production of presidential dollar coins.
Stopping production of the coins is part of the Obama administration’s Campaign to Cut Waste. Biden’s announcement came at a Cabinet meeting focused on that campaign.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
In 1964 you could buy 2 gallons of gasoline with two 1964 (or earlier date) quarters. Today, those two 1964 quarters are worth the equivalent of 3 gallons of gasoline. Melt value today of a single 1964 (or earlier date) quarter = $5.55.
I read somewhere once that the reason they don't get rid of the $1 bill is because the Kennedy clan owns the paper mill that makes the special type of paper for American bills.
Yes, this is the explanation that I heard behind the very premise of the dollar coins. But is the metal now too pricy? Or are the Obama people just dumb? (Tough choice)
Biden’s buddy Mike Castle instituted the Presidential dollar coin series.
I'd say it's a 'coin toss' but it looks like that vernacular may soon disappear from our culture. /s
Scrapping them?
Idiots.
I would have gladly paid them 50 cents on the dollar...
I wonder if we couldn’t scrap Joe Biden to save some money...
When the dollar coin was introduced by law, that same law said millions and millions had to be made year after year. As few Americans want the coins, all these coins have been stored at high rents in warehouses. If Joe is correct that making the dollars coins has been suspended, good. I fear he just is referring to the president series, which was only a tiny fraction of the production.
We could stop printing paper dollars for about five years and reissue those dollar coins for five years before new dollar coins would be needed to maintain a dollar unit of US currency.
Since production of the coins is mandated by LAW, the Treasury department can only do what Congress allows them to do. I didn’t see anything in this article about amending or repealing the law that requires production of the coins. I don’t think any of the people making this proclamation have the authority to do it. Biden certainly doesn’t. The vice pResident has no authority at all, except deciding how hard to bang the gavel in the Senate.
Congress makes lots of stupid laws, and the law mandating production of coins nobody wants seems stupid to me. But it’s for CONGRESS to decide, not some two-bit tax-cheating swine of a Treasury Secretary.
Of course, this administration ignores laws whenever it wants to anyway.
And we’ve filled Congress with women lacking brains and men lacking brains and testicles, so they’re unlikely to assert their authority.
Wasn’t she Lewis & Clark’s guide?
At that time most people north of Albany were “Canadian”.
They anticipate runaway inflation to make the base metal too expensive. In a hyperinflationary environment, paper currency makes more sense.
A few years back I took some coins to a shop; the owner was interested in the silver, but only offered me $9 for ten Eisenhower dollars (nothing rare, but in great shape).
He explained that he was the one who had to take them to the bank...
“In a hyperinflationary environment, paper currency makes more sense.”
Finally, printing the money on one side only makes more sense.
I like them as emergency change in the ashtray. As a kid it was more than once that I would have to raid the ashtray of my old man’s quarters to buy enough gas to make it back home.
Hard to do that with quarters nowadays - so the dollar coins go in there now. (Them, and a few twenties in a ziplock bag shoved up under the seat of the truck!)
Personally, I would change how the US mint operates. To start with, common coinage could be made with plastic, not metal, as the Japanese have done for a long time.
Such coins could have reasonable, anti-counterfeiting security, such as having a nylon strip in them like is in paper money. Any more than that is unnecessary, as it would cost more than the coins are worth to counterfeit them.
But from there is potential for high value metal coins. For example, right now silver is worth $30-32 per ounce. So why not mint pure silver $100 coins?
The Canadian Maple Leaf gold coin is extremely pure, but it is also engraved with a laser hologram, which guarantees its value, but the hologram is easy to ruin. So it is best to seal Maple Leafs in a security container.
So given the current price of gold, why not mint a $2000, beautiful, 1-ounce gold piece?
When Franklin Roosevelt outlawed private ownership of gold, he did outlaw gold coins, however, could these coins be sold if the US government, by law, agreed to never confiscate them?
Maybe they can just stop printing money too, and just wire it to Soros and Goldman Sachs.
I assume this was like the state quarters where they were doing the presidents in order, a few a year. Did they happen to be on Carter?
Soon to be replaced with the Barack Obama 50 Gazillion Dollar note, which you can use to get a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
I can’t tell you how many vending machines off the Interstate that I have jammed with presidential dollar coins.
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