[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] One cent coins will stop entering circulation next year.
After more than two centuries the US government has finally decided to kill the penny.
The Treasury Department will stop minting new pennies and putting them in to circulation by early next year.
Soon there will not be enough pennies in circulation to fulfil cash transactions.
As a result, businesses will have to round up or round down their prices to the nearest five cents, the Treasury said in a statement.
The penny currently costs more than four times its value to make and the Treasury lost $85 million minting the coins last year alone.
| As a result, businesses will have to round up or round down their prices to the nearest five cents, the Treasury said in a statement. |
The phasing out of the penny may save the Treasury some immediate cash, but it raises the next currency problem, that of the nickel.
'If you get rid of the penny, it will increase the amount of nickels,' Rhett Jeppson, a former chief executive of the US Mint said.
'You lose more on a nickel than you do on a penny,' Jeppson told the New York Times.
Nickels, worth five cents, are also a loss-maker for the treasury, leaving an $18 million hole from their production last year.
The problem could be exacerbated by the end of the penny because demand for nickels is likely to shoot up in their place.
Since the Treasury loses more per coin on nickels - they cost around 14 cents to make - an increase in their production to meet demand could soon outweigh any savings made by axing the penny.
The decision to stop making pennies comes after years of bipartisan efforts to eradicate the coins.
President Obama was critical of the penny during his time in the White House.
Most recently, President Trump asked the Treasury to halt penny production in a social media post in February.
'For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents,' he wrote on Truth Social.
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