June 28, 2011
Politicians in Washington hardly let a few minutes go by without mentioning how broke the government is. So, it's a little surprising that they've created a stash of more than $1 billion that almost no one wants.
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.
Now, if we could just recover the $12 BILLION that Bush sent over there IN CASH...that conveniently disappeared....
How the US sent $12bn in cash to Iraq. And watched it vanish Special flights brought in tonnes of banknotes which disappeared into the war zone
The US flew nearly $12bn in shrink-wrapped $100 bills into Iraq, then distributed the cash with no proper control over who was receiving it and how it was being spent.
The staggering scale of the biggest transfer of cash in the history of the Federal Reserve has been graphically laid bare by a US congressional committee.
In the year after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 nearly 281 million notes, weighing 363 tonnes, were sent from New York to Baghdad for disbursement to Iraqi ministries and US contractors. Using C-130 planes, the deliveries took place once or twice a month with the biggest of $2,401,600,000 on June 22, 2004, six days before the handover.
Details of the shipments have emerged in a memorandum prepared for the meeting of the House committee on oversight and government reform which is examining Iraqi reconstruction. Its chairman, Henry Waxman, a fierce critic of the war, said the way the cash had been handled was mind-boggling. "The numbers are so large that it doesn't seem possible that they're true. Who in their right mind would send 363 tonnes of cash into a war zone?"
The memorandum details the casual manner in which the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority disbursed the money, which came from Iraqi oil sales, surplus funds from the UN oil-for-food programme and seized Iraqi assets.
"One CPA official described an environment awash in $100 bills," the memorandum says. "One contractor received a $2m payment in a duffel bag stuffed with shrink-wrapped bundles of currency. Auditors discovered that the key to a vault was kept in an unsecured backpack.
I love the gold dollar coins! Feel like real money. Think I will get some out of the bank today, more fun giving $25 of gold coins in a gift bag than some silly gift card to kids.
If I was POTUS, I would stop making dollar bills, like the Euro and the Canadian dollar.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
SS109 wrote: I love the gold dollar coins! Feel like real money. Think I will get some out of the bank today, more fun giving $25 of gold coins in a gift bag than some silly gift card to kids.
If I was POTUS, I would stop making dollar bills, like the Euro and the Canadian dollar.
I like that idea, I have a pretty good stash of gold dollars. Well I did, until they fell out of the canoe along with all my guns.
The gold dollars make excellent tooth fairy payments!
"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill
While we're on the subject of saving money - why not stop minting new pennies as well? Each penny costs 1.5 cents to mint. The government could pay everyone 1.25 cents for each penny in their penny jars at home and save themselves a quarter of a penny (a 16.6% savings) and enrich the people all at the same time. Designate one week a year (more if necessary) for the redemption of the penny during which no pennies are handed out (so people can't get a role of pennies for 50 cents from one bank and turn them in for 62 cents at the one down the street) and we can stop minting pennies altogether and simply use the ones we have already that are sitting in jars and jugs because they no longer purchase anything.
I don't know how that would cut it in half - a third perhaps since 3 cents would only require two coins instead of three. Thinking it through a bit more, it might actually double the problem since you would then have two coins that needed minting instead of one that would end up in jars instead of circulation.
