Last year, the Treasury Department didn't even bother printing any new $10 bills.
NYT reports the number of $5 bills the Treasury made fell to a 30 year low, and the number of George Washingtons also hit a new bottom. It's all about supply and demand. More and more people are opting to use plastic for even small purchases, so there's not as much need for the paper.
What about coins? Metal currency production is down, but for a different reason. It's Coinstar. These machines that let you dump in a bucket of coins and get cash back have helped get a massive amount of coins back into circulation, whereas before they would just sit in people's jars and between their couch cushions. With so many coins coming back into the stream, the Mint doesn't have to make as many of them.
I prefer to use cash because I think I spend less when I have to use physical money. But sometimes it's definitely easier to whip out the plastic, even if it's just for a $2.50 gallon of milk.
Now, the Treasury "printing money" through quantitative easing is a whole other story...
As Plastic Reigns, the Treasury Slows Its Printing Presses [NYT]
Yes, Coins Too [Economix Blog]
3 comments:
$2.50 a gallon??? Where do you shop???
I use cash because I don't like large companies tracking each and every purchase I make.
America really needs to get with the 21st. century and do away with the usless "Penny" and the paper 1$ bill. A coin is cheaper to mint in the long run, it lasts forever and paper bills last only a few months. Most other modern countries have coins for their lowest denominations. Canada has 1 and 2 dollar coins and is now looking into a 5 dollar coin. You get people to change to using them by NOT printing paper in that amount, period. You can also put a lot of criminals out of business by printing nothing larger than a 20 dollar bill. How is a crook going to launder 20 30 thousand dollars in 20's??? How is he going to carry all of that cash to buy drugs to sell to our kids?? 100 dollar bills make it way to easy from crooks to accumulate large amounts of drugs.
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