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Apologies to Bare Naked Ladies; it just seemed to fit: the feds are sitting on a billion dollars worth of one-dollar coins that nobody much uses, and the mints keep making more of them.
Unused dollar coins have been quietly piling up in Federal Reserve vaults in breathtaking numbers, thanks to a government program that has required their production since 2007.
And even though the neglected mountain of money recently grew past the $1 billion mark, the U.S. Mint will keep making more and more of the coins under a congressional mandate.
For some unknown reason, Congress wanted people to stop using dollar bills and transition to dollar coins, sort of like the Canadian Loonie. But most vending machines don't take them, and a lot of folks prefer the light-weight "paper" bills. Hey, does this $100 in coins make my butt look fat?
But, it's a government program, and so it continues. It's only cost around $300 million to produce truckloads of coins that nobody uses, but hey that'll double by the time the program's run ends, five years from now. But $600 million's really chump change to the feds.
