Some Thoughts on Dollar Coins

The US government is ending the dollar coin program because they have 1.4 billion of them all ready in storage. Matt Yglesias jokingly (at least I think it's a joke) says we should pick 1,400 random people and give each of them a million of them. I certainly would love to receive that many dollar coins as would many 5 year olds but I can't say the same for the rest of society. I would assume they would for the most part end up back at the Federal Reserve.


Instead I think we should do away with the dollar bill all together and force people to use the coins. If coins are indeed more cost effective to use then we should be pushing individuals to use them not simply giving them the option. 


While we're at it how about we do away with the penny and add a 50 cent piece and a $2 coin to reduce the amount of coinage out there. I can't find a GAO report on that but I would expect that reducing the amount of currency by increasing denominations would save money. 


And for those of you who will complain about having to carry around pockets full of coins I would like to point out that with implementing $1 $2 & 50¢ coins and the elimination of the penny (also if you use them efficiently) you should never have more than 6 coins in your pocket at any given time. Think about it.

Some thoughts on Single Currency Unions

I always used to think that being able to tour Europe while never having to exchange my money was a good enough reason to have things such as the Euro. But now having traveled abroad a bit I have come to love that one of my CCs does not charge extra for foreign transactions and that with debit cards I can pull out exactly how much I want for a very marginal fee (both receive the prevailing exchange rate of the day).

In lieu of the European Debt crisis and with non-Euro EU countries apparently doing great, I'm starting to wonder do the pros outweigh the cons in regards to single currencies? Should we be going in the opposite direction? Would Arizona and Massachusetts benefit from different currencies? Probably, though I'm not actually advocating that. What I am saying is that in order for a single currency to work you need to collaborate on everything else; wages, business practices, tax rates, bank regulations, etc. If you can't do that then you should forgo the single currency and focus more on making currencies easier to exchange so as not to confuse the consumer.