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Frugi
Administrator
USA
627 Posts |
 Posted - 05/07/2008 : 11:21:19
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It looks like they might be considering US nickels and cents to be made of steel soon.
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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.
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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.
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horgad
1000+ Penny Miser Member
USA
1641 Posts |
Posted - 05/07/2008 : 14:57:43
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| Man that makes me want to get a hold of some UNC 2008 nickels. I would say UNC 2008 pennies too, but those things are already piling up for me... |
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Ardent Listener
Administrator
USA
4841 Posts |
Posted - 05/07/2008 : 15:51:12
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Now all of a sudden that zinc doesn't stink so much.  |
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Think positive. |
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swusc
Penny Hoarding Member
USA
553 Posts |
Posted - 05/07/2008 : 19:56:35
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quote:
Originally posted by horgad
Man that makes me want to get a hold of some UNC 2008 nickels. I would say UNC 2008 pennies too, but those things are already piling up for me...
I have yet to see a 2008 penny. It is almost mid May too.
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`Everybody is ignorant. Only on different subjects.' Will Rogers
"This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the "hidden" confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard." Alan Greenspan, 1966. |
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NotABigDeal
1000+ Penny Miser Member
USA
3890 Posts |
Posted - 05/07/2008 : 20:02:38
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quote:
Originally posted by Ardent Listener
Now all of a sudden that zinc doesn't stink so much.
Yep. Could be the next "thing"? I saw my first '08 D today.
Deal |
Live free or die.
Plain and simple.
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your council or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams |
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Frugi
Administrator
USA
627 Posts |
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fiatboy
Administrator
912 Posts |
Posted - 05/08/2008 : 16:01:35
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It passed the House, now it's on to the Senate.
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"Bart, it's not about how many stocks you have, it's about how much copper wire you can get out of the building." --- Homer Simpson |
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Ardent Listener
Administrator
USA
4841 Posts |
Posted - 05/08/2008 : 16:58:38
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What if he decided to make them out of gold? I don't see any restriction against it in the bill. |
Realcent.forumco.com disclosure. Please read.
All posts either by the members, moderators, and the administration of http://realcent.forumco.com are for your edification and amusement only. It is not the intent of realcent.forumco.com or its host to provide investment, medical, matrimonial, legal, security or tax advice and nothing posted here should be considered to be so. All rights reserved.
Think positive. |
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Nickelless
Administrator
USA
5580 Posts |
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starwarsgeek171
Penny Hoarding Member
USA
651 Posts |
Posted - 05/09/2008 : 20:16:03
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Great post! This is the exact article that I read to the students at school today who attend the coin club. I also gave a copy to the bankers that are helping me the most (to help them better understand the penny guy). It's nice to see this information go mainstream. I'm glad that I've been saving a little more zinc lately. I really think that nice BU example zincolns could possibly demand a fair premium sometime in the future.
HCBTT - The kids found many flawless BU examples in your rolls. Thank you. |
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US minting steel coins soon
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