Originally Posted by
ChaseTheMiles
It seems to me we ought to have all the Presidents in history minted. It would be a loss to see just some of the Presidents on the coins and not the others.
Since the NBC program stated the cost is less than 0.35 to mint, clearly it is a profitable program if more circulation is encouraged, such as speedy phasing out of the bills. I have paid with coins, given the coins as gifts to kids, and haven't met anyone who rejected the coins.
Although I started buy direct from the Mint for the dollar coins, I got to learn more about other great coin collections and have purchased them for myself and for gifts.
We should acknowledge and thank the Mint for doing its job well. Where do we send a thank-you note or tell our Congress reps. that the Mint is one government program that's doing the job it's supposed to be doing and doing it well?
As for the Fed spending money for storage, why doesn't the Fed pay their contractors and the banks in coins?
p.s. I would prefer we don't bring any left/right or lib/con politics into our discussion. Let's just focus on the Mint itself as a great government agency and the dollar coins as a beneficial program.
p.p.s. I'm concerned about the NBC/Brian Williams report as it could lead to broader reporting in shows under NBC's umbrella, and will CBS/ABC/FOX/CNN be much behind? Although some people blame the NPR program, remember reporters could not have written the reports without detail confirmations from individual participants.
Great post. The Mint showed tremendous business savvy by figuring out how to sell these coins at a profit to individual customers when the banks would not buy them.
I am amazed at the lack of good reporting regarding the role of banks in this situation. Most of us spend some of the coins and deposit some of them. The entity with the greatest ability to "circulate" the coins and "educate" the masses regarding the long-term benefits of using dollar coins instead of dollar bills are the banks. When retailers go to the banks early in the morning to pick up the daily currency, a significant portion of the dollr order could be delivered in $1 coins. When the working folk go to the bank to cash a paycheck, the dollar portion could be in $1 coins.
The banks are the players that ship the $1 coins to the Fed, not us. The Mint and the direct ship customers are not doing anything wrong.