Secret Squirrel has noted the decline of that valued piece of currency, the lowly penny, the all important penny,a penny not saved,not earned, but threatened,threatened in such a fashion that we will no longer be able to be penny wise,pound foolish if we so choose. In short, in the field of currency, in the field of monetary,finance,there are incursions made to remove form our person, our valued pennies, and this, displease Secret Squirrel, as it should also displease you.In England it shall be so very much worse, for we'd be left without, literally, our pence.We'd be subject to abuse,derogatory phrases,derision,we'd be made fun of, and yet they'd be right, for we would be left standing their without our pence.Sad state of affairs it has come to.Here we see what the situation is coming to in Canada........
http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Fate+penny+hangs+balance/3971895/story.html
Fate of penny hangs in the balance
OTTAWA — The Senate’s finance committee is to introduce its recommendation on Tuesday on whether the country should abandon the penny, with media reports suggesting the one-cent coin will be discarded.In April, the committee was charged with investigating the penny’s usefulness, with the coin characterized by some as no longer necessary to the modern economy because the cost to produce it exceeds its financial value.During hearings held in October, representatives from the Bank of Canada, a number of industries, consumer groups, and charities all told the
committee that they wouldn’t miss the penny if it were discontinued.
A Canadian Press report, attributed to unnamed sources, said the committee was set to recommend just that, citing evidence that over time, inflation has rendered the penny needless.New Zealand and Australia have ditched their pennies, and New Zealand has even abandoned its five-cent piece. Neither country experienced much in
the way of economic fallout afterward(However,they can't be asked "A Penny for your thoughts.",they simply haven't any)......................
On March 31, 2008, NDP MP Pat Martin introduced a private member's bill that would eliminate the penny from circulation. The Swedish rounding system
is the suggested replacement for cash transactions.It failed.In mid-2010 the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance began a study on the future of the one-cent coin.However, the Canadian Senate is quite simply a sort of old boys old folks home for refugees from the government itself, The Canadian House Of Commons.
Let's continue, with a history of the penny, of sorts,firstly Canadian pennies......
Currently the penny is 0.01 (penny): 94% steel, 1.5% nickel, 4.5% copper plating.Between 2000-2002, the Royal Canadian Mint altered the composition of its coins. Formerly 99% nickel in the case of silver-coloured coins and the loonie, and 98,4% zinc in the case of the penny, they are now plated steel...
Now here's a look at American pennies,and what they were made from.......
1793–1857 100% copper
1857–1864 88% copper, 12% nickel (also known as NS-12)
1864–1942 1946–1962 bronze (95% copper, 5% tin and zinc)(This was for MOST years)
1943 zinc coated steel
1974 aluminum
1982–present* 97.5% zinc core, 2.5% copper plating so isn't really copper as people believe it to be,but still seems to cost in materials, if it were copper the value would be enormous by today's copper prices, but associations with copper prices are totally out of line, copper isn't really involved at all.
As of 2009, it cost the U.S. Mint 1.62 cents to make a penny because of the costs of the penny's materials and production.Canadian pennies cost 1.5 cents to make.
However, at present, in the USA,it's unlikely that the penny is to disappear anytime soon, as this is found on The U.S. Mint website...........in their FAQ............
"We occasionally hear from people who believe that the Mint should stop producing one-cent coins and remove them from circulation. You may be interested to know that the penny is the most widely used denomination currently in circulation. There was a study conducted in 1976 of this and other suggestions regarding our coinage system. However, the idea of eliminating the penny received strong objections from an overwhelming majority of State revenue collection departments, retail firms, and commercial banks. Other objections voiced in later studies concerned the inflationary impact of such a proposal on prices and possible difficulties on collecting sales taxes.
It has not been confirmed that the penny has outlived its usefulness. Neither business nor the public as a whole has pressured for changes in the coin denominations in circulation today. In addition, our coin and currency system is among the most trusted in the world. The vast majority of users apparently are content with the existing coin denominations, including the one-cent coin. As a result, the Treasury Department has no plans now to cease production of the penny. In addition, such a change to the United States monetary system could not be done without prior Congressional authorization. If directed to do so by legislation enacted by the Congress and signed by the President, the Treasury Department would again study phasing out the penny. Since the demand exists and the Federal Reserve Banks require inventories to meet the demand, the United States Mint is committed to producing the penny."
There are others who support the penny.........
Of course, there are also industry groups that strongly support the penny: one prominent one is "Americans for Common Cents", which is (surprise!) a
zinc industry trade group (pennies are 97% zinc, with a copper coat. Pre-1982, it was the reverse and they were mostly copper). On their website (www.pennies.org) they list several bullet points in support of the penny. Among these are:
* Pennies facilitate commerce: The U.S. Mint produces roughly 13 billion pennies annually
* Elimination of the penny would increase prices
* Charitable causes, which accept pennies as donations, would suffer
* The penny "is part of our nation's history and culture"
* The U.S. Treasury makes a profit from the penny
Sadly, there isn't material cheap enough to make a penny,it seems,except..........well now, it's a question of size isn't it?There are companies making metal filter type casing containers,such as say American Air Filter and others, and they're happily punching holes in to metals.Never mind
their uses for their finished product, but they do have this scrap left, this massive quantity of scrap, scrap "holes",well, disks as it were, metal disks, which are discarded or sold at pennies the ton for scrap, or simply given to be hauled away. The government could actually take these, then simply stamp them as pennies, and hence the penny cost to proiduce would thence drop to a tiny miniscule fraction of what it's worth!!!!!!But then, for the Canadians, it's American Air Filter isn't it? Aye, there's the rub, for them.but not for America, I'm sure they would be glad to contribute their scrap disks to be stamped in to pennies to save the American penny economy. And I'm sure, similar firms in Britain, assuming they're still
British after the Great Labour sell off of British companies to the French and the Germans, and who ever else there was,well, if there are any loyal BRITISH firms such left, they'd also supply,similarly, the British government to easily save the pence.
Any more possible replacements for penny?Well now, what of the penny candy............however what do we find..........Because of inflation and the
decline of the penny's value, penny candy is more often sold for a nickel or a dime..........can't be penny wise then, so penny wise, pound foolish,becomes penny foolish pound wise?
There is yet another solution,hidden deep within American coinage history, here we find that America once had a 2 cent coin.The American two-cent piece, also known as the “shield two-cent coin,” was a bronze coin first struck in 1864 and lasted until 1873. It appeared in the peak of the Civil War era (1861-1865) and at a time when Americans needed it most.The final and most important “first” that this coin is famous for is the motto “In God We Trust.”,in short,the politicians knew the nation was in deep doo doo with them. So if a penny costs 1.67 cents to make, manufacture it as a 2 cent coin, and therefor have a .33 cent profit or else regard it as a .33 manufacturing inflation cushion on each........this change would make 99 cent prices impossible, but then 98 cent would just have to do.All things would easily even out the as it were,should we do that but we simply call it, a penny!And so, everything can be right as rain,for those whom are intelligent. But then there's not much regards there with respect to Canadian politicians,certainly not those of the Canadian Senate, so it goes, they all seem to be a penny short of a dollar.
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