Wednesday, September 28, 2011

The FATE of the US Dollar Bill being debated by Congress

A trio of U.S. House members have introduced a bill to eliminate the dollar bill, long a high legislative priority for the amusement game trade.

"Representatives David Schweikert (Ariz.) and two other House Republicans - including supercommittee co-chairman Jeb Hensarling (Texas) - introduced legislation last week aimed at retiring the paper dollar," reported the website TheHill.com, which covers Congress. "Schweikert said his bill would save billions of dollars over the next few decades by transitioning to a dollar coin in four years, or as soon as $600 million worth of dollar coins are in circulation. Schweikert said 3 billion paper dollars are shredded every year, and the constant need to destroy these dollars and create new ones is a cost the government can no longer bear. He said metal coins would last longer and therefore save money."

However, a counter measure has been proposed by Massa chussetts senators Scott Brown and John Kerry to protect the dollar bill, which was also a longstanding position supported by the late senator Ted Kennedy.

"The Brown-Kerry bill would prevent the minting of $1 coins when a surplus of them exists. The two senators argue that $1.2 billion worth of $1 dollar coins are sitting in the Federal Reserve's vaults, not in circulation, which is adding to the Fed's storage costs," The Hill explained, noting that the dollar bill is produced on paper supplied by Mass.-based Crane & Co.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

New $100 bills delayed indefinitely no release date in sight



As of September 9, 2011 the US Treasury and Federal Reserve still has now announced the release date for the new United States One-Hundred dollar bills. The new bills were announced April 2010 and slated to be issued February 2011 . The release was delayed due to problems in production and printing of the new bills. They discovered sporadic creeping of the paper during the printing process, causing bill creasing. They printed about $1.1 Billion of the new bills before this problem was discovered. They are hand examining the bills already printed and are finding that most of the bills will be usable when the problem is resolved. To date they still have not found a solution to this problem and are working to find a suitable resolution as soon as possible. The Federal Reserve will make a public announcement at least 6 months before issuing the new $100 to allow merchants and other businesses to prepare for the new bills. To watch a video about this click here . Please visit our web site count-money.com for updates