00:00Did Trump kill the penny?
00:03Not exactly.
00:04In February, he ordered the Treasury Department
00:06to stop minting new pennies,
00:08but control of the nation's currency
00:10is supposed to lie in Congress, not the executive.
00:13No one's sure whether he really has the power to do that,
00:16and as of this recording, they're still being minted.
00:19Not that anyone would really miss them.
00:21Each penny costs over three and a half cents to produce,
00:24and most people find them more of a nuisance
00:26than a thing of value.
00:28Perhaps the only people fighting to keep the penny alive
00:31are the hundreds of workers who may lose their jobs.
00:33There is some fear that eliminating the penny
00:36could lead to higher prices as retailers round up
00:39to the nearest nickel, but Canada ditched their penny in 2012
00:43and saw no significant price effects.
00:45But people who think that pennies are about to become
00:47a collector's item, like the ones trying to sell them
00:50at 30 times their value on eBay, are mistaken.
00:53With over 240 billion of them still in circulation,
00:57you're likely to see them lying around for the rest of your life.
01:00Whether you'll bother to bend down and pick one up
01:03is another question.
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