Comments on: US Mint Coin Production Edges Above 1 Billion in April 2014

By: Munze

Munze — Sat, 10 May 2014 22:52:25 +0000

The number of coins in circulation is very unlikely to result in inflation. Coins are needed mostly for making change, so IMO increased demand for coins is a good thing: Even though most purchases are electronic, an increase in coin usage would still correlate with an increase in economic activity.

Now if you ask me if the Mint and Treasury should still be pumping out huge numbers of cents and paper dollars, that’s an argument I’m prepared to make. It’s ridiculous for half of the BEP’s production to be $1 bills and maybe 2/3 of the Mint’s output to be cents. Get rid of the penny and dollar bill, use $2 bills or $2 coins, and maybe out currency would be less outdated and more efficient.

By: Griffin

Griffin — Fri, 09 May 2014 19:04:07 +0000

Has anyone given thought as to how many U.S. coins are floating around in circulation right now? All things being constant, lets say the two main mints create 1B coins a month = 12 B a year X 30 years (Avg. life of a coin in circulation) = 360 Billion coins (most if it in Pennys). We only have 300 Million people living in this country, so why are we pumping so much coinage and currency into our hands? The value of the dollar keeps going down, in part because we have so much of it floating around out there. What if we didn’t put any coins into circulation for 5 years, and only minted coins for collectors? Think of the effect it would have on the value of our all mighty dollar.
This is just my opinion. Anyone else agree?