Opinions: Is America Ready For A Brown Nickel?

Turkey, 2005: Redenomination, 1,000,000 Old = 1 New
Romania, 2005: Redenomination, 10,000 Old = 1 New
Poland, 1995: Redenomination, 10,000 Old = 1 New
Belgium, 1999: Monetary Union, 40.3399 Old = 1 Euro
Etc.

Many nations have done it, and it works. People would adapt.



Who says there'd need to be enough gold to a)convert all existing USD (10 Trillion) into gold or b)have enough gold for everyone in the world?

The only reason we left the gold standard was the US went bankrupt in 1933. The big purpose of precious metal backed currency is to prevent the current fiat mass printing of it (since, you can only mint enough gold or silver coin as there is gold or silver), it is possible to bring back (and it's possible to supplement it with other precious metals) to allow more cash to be produced if needed. Think Muammar Gaddafi's Gold Dinar that would have destroyed every currency on the planet.

Um... me. Right now I think the amount of gold on the planet is worth 6 trillion, and the world economy is worth about 85 trillion (and yes the US economy is also worth more than 6 trillion). Basically, how are you going to fit all that into 6 trillion of gold? You'd have to lower the value of every currency by a huge amount... which is inflation...

This gold stuff is just fetishism. There is nothing relevant about it any more (bitcoin is even worse because it's an up-and-coming fetish and it's not shiny). Same thing with the nickel and penny: they are losing money. If you were running a business, would you let two cashiers steal everything that comes into the till if the other two cashiers (along with two retired cashiers who are rarely seen) are diligent and good workers? No! It's absolute wastage and you can't defend it without just coming out and saying "I, personally, enjoy the penny and nickel from a numismatic point of view", because from every other point of view the penny is a dirty nuisance and the nickel is an ugly nuisance.

Supplementing it with anything else makes doing so in the first place pointless. The whole idea is to have a limit on how much money can be spent, supplementation takes away that limit defeating the purpose. It sounds like a great idea until you realize things happen and you arent going to stick to that anyway. Like mentioned that doesn't even get into the fact its not possible with the amount of money and people in the world today.

Going bankrupt on the gold standard also shows why its a bad idea and not going to happen. You have absolutely no wiggle room when things go bad and every nation in history has ended up reducing the pms in their money or coming up with bills and goldless money when they needed too which again makes the whole exercise pointless.

Metals dont give money value, military might does. You look throughout history and the most valuable/most sought after/most accepted currencies were always the military powers of their time. Their money continued to have value regardless of what it was made of until their military lost its power.

Saying a microscopic fleck of gold backs this dollar doesn't make money any more valuable.

I still say, if we are going to keep the cent and the nickel, the U.S. government should reissue the 2 cent coin, (or double penny, double cent, whatever tou want to call it) This way, even though the government would STILL NOT come out ahead, they would still be spending less money on minting so many cents, and possibly slightly releive nickel production as well. We would just have to get the same cash drawers for cash regesters like Bm0ney has in their avatar with the 8 coin slots, then we could even use the half, the $1 coin and a $2 coin that way (1c, 2c, 5c, 10c, 25c, 50c, $1, $2.)

Also, if vendors are in fact, going to have to replace coin mechs and other parts, I really think they should have to make those machines able to accept and dispense halves. Speaking of which, why does the U.S. Mint never mention changing the composition of the half or the dollar coin whenever they talk about changing coin metal compositions? They always just mention the penny, nickel, dime, and quarter.

Anyway, does anyone else here feel that the idea of a reissued 2 cent coin might lower the coin of 1 and 5 cent production? I believe that the Euro has a 2 cent coin. Whther it circulates or not, I'm not sure, but it would be wirth a shot for the government to trying getting 2 cent coins back into circulation.

Just my 2 cents (litrally )