Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that in addition to tinkering with healthcare, financial regulation and who-knows-what-all, President Obama is looking to save the government money by minting coins out of cheaper materials.
This exercise would save $100 million according to the Treasury, the equivalent of searching between the couch cushions for stray coins with a mortgage payment due.
The comments from Rod Gillis, educator at the American Numismatic Association, are interesting. He says, “People believe that we are still on some sort of precious-metal standard.”
Gillis often asks people what gives a paper dollar its value. “Eight in 10 people make some sort of reference to the gold in Fort Knox,” he says.
I remember speaking to a few classes of high school kids in Las Vegas years ago, and many said their parents and grandparents told them that there was gold in Fort Knox backing the dollar.
