Each Penny Cost 1.67 Cents To Mint, Report Pun-Loving Journalists

The Seattle Times, The New York Times, The Oakland Tribune, The San Diego Union-Tribune, this blogging guy ... they all love employing "Stop Making Cents" when describing the current status of the penny. Namely, that it's so expensive to make one relative to its value that the U.S. Mint has lost over $115 million in under a year making them and that there is now a Federal ban on melting pennies, nickels and dimes down for scrap.

Other annoying pun options for discussing this situation include: "The Penny Stops Here" from The Washington Post, "Common Cents" from Time magazine and most recently (and tolerably) "Penny Dreadful" from The New Yorker.

If only there were someone with a good idea about what to do, who was also capable of something funny ... someone like Obama's wonky economics advisor Austan Goolsbee! "Now That a Penny Isn’t Worth Much, It’s Time to Make It Worth 5 Cents"!? Now, that's a funny title! (And it also happens to be a good way around the Lincoln-penny loving sentiment as covertly supported by the nefarious zinc lobby. It's really too bad that some monied weirdo will just rally all the Thomas Jefferson enthusiasts who love those 2006 forward-facing nickels. Sorry, Goolsbee.)