The Associated Press has a somewhat interesting but mostly pretty bland article today on how congressional auditors are making something of a push to do away with American dollar bills in favor of those gold dollar coins that you and most everyone else hates. The idea is far from new but it appears to be getting a little more attention than usual given the current focus on federal penny-pinching. The paper-bill-to-metal-coin switch would save taxpayers an estimated $4.4 billion over the next three decades.
The story is pegged to three things: 1) those projections from the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress; 2) a House subcommittee hearing held yesterday entitled “The Future of Money: Dollars and Sense,” where GAO officials talked about their findings; and 3) the fact the U.S. Mint is prepping a report for lawmakers showing how changes in the metal content of coins could save money.
Newsworthy, sure, but like we said pretty dry stuff. Here’s the AP summary of the forthcoming Mint report for example:
The Mint’s report, which is due in mid-December, will detail the results of nearly 18 months of work exploring a variety of new metal compositions and evaluating test coins for attributes as hardness, resistance to wear, availability of raw materials and costs. Richard Peterson, the Mint’s acting director, declined to give lawmakers a summary of what will be in the report, but he said “several promising alternatives” were found.
Any chance anyone wants to try to sex that story up, possibly with a photo-shopped graphic (that we’re not exactly sure we even completely understand)? Yes, in the back, you with one of the most-read news websites on the Internet:
Screenshot of The Drudge Report on Friday afternoon
As Weigel routinely points out, the answer to pretty much any headline that ends with a question mark is No.
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