How to save billions of dollars.

[Maitre]

Best logical anti-penny rant ever!

[video style rant]The one thng I didn't hear was the economic projection for the metals industry if the penny goes away. What happens when somebody starts a copper/zinc reclamation business processing the old pennies, and starts selling cheap recycled copper? How does this affect global demand for raw copper mined in Africa? Oh yeah, and what is the estimate of environmental impact when people discover pennies they forgot to redeem during the buy-back period before the coin disappears. What are they going to do? Toss the penny. Then you get heavy metal accumulation in landfills (like there isn't enough of that already). [/video style rant]

To be perfectly honest, I can't disagree with the premise that any denomination more expensive to produce than it is worth is a prime candidate for removal, however, I don' think dropping to the three coin system recomended in the video would fly in the US. With the present state and local tax rates (depending on jurisdiction ranging from 0% - 7.5% or more) small denominations still seem important to me. I would instead propose a four coin system: copper "nickels," dimes, quarters and dollar coins.

Although, maybe we should eliminate hard currency altogether now, rather than waiting until farther in the future when barcodes and scans will be the only currency we need.