How Bidenflation killed the penny with a spending spree that tanked its value

So much for the maxim “a penny saved is a penny earned.”  No longer will you be able to offer someone “a penny for your thoughts.” The next generation won’t even know what penny loafers are. That’s because President Trump has announced the federal government will stop forthwith the production of the penny.When I heard the news I felt pangs of nostalgic sadness. I’m old enough to remember when you could buy a pack of baseball cards for 10 pennies or a Coke for 15.

I remember when McDonald’s fries cost 19 cents. But alas, the demise of the penny was inevitable given the erosion of its value — and that of the dollar, too. Now that small bag of fries can cost $2 or more.

 The penny has been slipping in value since inflation hit hard in the 1970s. But former President Biden probably put the final nail in the coin’s coffin with his spending spree that cut the value of a penny by 21% in four years.Today the purchasing power of 10 pennies equals roughly what one penny was worth 50 years ago.In other words, the penny has lost 90% of its purchasing power. This devaluation is a failure of a runaway government that spends more and more and shrinks the value of our currency on the way.

Special thanks for the debacle goes to President Richard Nixon for taking the dollar off the gold standard. Here’s why Trump had no real choice here: It now costs more than three cents to mint each one of the more than 3 billion new pennies made every year — so it has become a money-losing proposition for Uncle Sam to produce them.The zinc and copper in a penny are about as valuable as the buying power of the coin itself.

 The term for this is “reverse seigniorage,” and last year it meant a loss of more than $80 million for the government. My worry is that the end of the copper penny (actually made mostly of zinc) is a surrender in the fight against inflation.If we’ve accepted as inevitable the steady erosion of the dollar, the massive government spend...