Canada Eliminates Penny Costing Penny-and-a Half to Make-Bloomberg

[Pastor Guest]

Canada is eliminating pennies, requiring rounding to nearest nickel for cash transactions, but you can still use one
cent in cashless transactions.

From Bloomberg-

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...f-to-make.html

Cash is being killed off.

http://stepstowardthemark.com

[Summerthyme]

Wow!

I wonder if the quart+ of Canadian pennies I've got stashed are worth keeping around as eventual keepsakes?

Summerthyme

[RightWinger]

Currently, for every one cent made by the United States Mint costs 2.41 cents. Its probably just a matter of time that it happens here too.

It sounds nice that everything will be 'rounded off' to the nearest nichel, but in reality, will it be typically rounded up or down? I think it will be rounded up much more than down, further putting the shaft to the consumers.

[Jeffrey Thomason]

Currently, for every one cent made by the United States Mint costs 2.41 cents. Its probably just a matter of time that it happens here too.

It sounds nice that everything will be 'rounded off' to the nearest nichel, but in reality, will it be typically rounded up or down? I think it will be rounded up much more than down, further putting the shaft to the consumers.

Of course it would be rounded up.. everything at 99cents would be rounded up one cent to the nearest dollar rather then rounded down four cents. To do otherwise would be insane on the company's part.

The penny has been on the chopping block for a long, long time.

[Hurricane]

Once the coins are not made of gold or silver or some other "precious" material, I'm not sure it matters. The value hasn't been tied to the content for a long time anyway. Let 'em be plastic or steel or what ever.
Maybe I can start using all those wooden nickels I've been suckered into.

[LadyInWaiting]

Then we'll need a 10% sales tax, even at the Dollar stores.

[Powder]

Exactly. Our county 6.5% sales tax? Guess where it's going...UP, not down.

[orion commander]

Wow!

I wonder if the quart+ of Canadian pennies I've got stashed are worth keeping around as eventual keepsakes?

Summerthyme

Ufda. Ya you betcha.

[moonarch]

Today Canada also raised the retirement age to 67 - for the year 2023.

[Croatoan]

It can't be long before something similar happens here. See the article below.

Wonder what TurboTimmy plans to substitute for the "valuable metals" of copper, nickel and zinc ... that replaced the really valuable metals of gold and silver in America's coinage decades ago? Steel? Aluminum? Plastic maybe?

Sounds like what LBJ said, back when he was considering the Coinage Act of 1965, which stripped the 90% silver out of America's dimes, quarters, half dollars and dollar coins and replaced them with copper sandwiched in silver colored metal.
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http://articles.philly.com/2012-03-2...l-small-change
Philly Deals: Geithner sees cash in coins' metal
March 29, 2012

Like an old man with a cart picking up junk on Ridge Avenue, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is trying to turn scraps of metal into cash.

Geithner wants to strip copper and other valuable metals from the Philadelphia and Denver coining lines that mint America's small change. "Currently, the costs of making the penny and the nickel are more than twice the face value of each of those coins," he told a House Appropriations Committee panel Wednesday.

Treasury wants a law that would give it the freedom "to change the composition of coins to utilize more cost-effective materials" without having to ask Congress for permission every time it dilutes the content of the national coinage.
...

For full article see http://articles.philly.com/2012-03-2...l-small-change