#814 Zecchino

Our pennies will never be zecchino. That’s right zecchino. Zecchino is the plural word for an Italian coin that was eventually degenerated into sequin.
Sequins, as you know, are those nearly worthless discs of shiny metal that belly dancers and teenage daughters affix to their clothing. The better quality garments have them affixed with thread.
The teenage garments, destined to be worn for less than a month, then consigned to the back-of-the-closet, fickle, fashion heap are affixed with glue. Not very good glue either. At least insofar as it sticks to the clothing it was originally intended to stick to.
It sticks well enough to the carpet, that many passes with a vacuum cleaner fail to suck it up.
In any event, our pennies will not suffer that fate as they are currently worth more than their face value. As are nickels. Pennies now cost about 1.26 cents to make.
That means they’re now worth four pennies to the nickel. Except nickels now cost around 8 cents. Damn.
But you can’t get that much for them. It’s against the law to melt down currency for the raw metal.
The U.S. Mint is complaining. Saying it’s impossible to continue this way. We are contributing to the national debt each time we mint money. Congressmen are wringing their hands. The press is in a frenzy and people are hoarding pennies in the mistaken assumption that copper prices are going to go through the roof.
If they only knew pennies were just 2% copper.
Real copper bootleggers are stealing people’s air conditioner compressors from their back yards to melt down.
I wonder if melting down air conditioners contributes to global warming.
But here’s the deal. It costs 1.25 cents to make a penny. So you lose a quarter-cent every time you make one. But it costs only 6 cents to make a dollar bill. Or 6 cents to make a thousand dollar bill. A thousand dollar bill makes a lot of cents.
So, um, print up a few extra of those.
You made your money back.
America, ya gotta love it.