Silverless Lining

One money-making Government operation is making money. Thus the nationwide coin shortage is actually a boon for the Administration, which has embarked on a crash program to double the Treasury output at the Department's two mints (Philadelphia and Denver). A far richer windfall for the Government, however, is the Coinage Act of 1965, passed by Congress in July to cut the multimillion-ounce yearly drain from the U.S.'s dwindling silver supply.* The law stipulates that all new dimes and quarters must be silverless and the silver content of half dollars trimmed from 90% to 40% .

As a result, the Government, which sells coins to banks at their face value, will soon be minting unheard-of profits. With the new copper-nickel alloy coins authorized by the bill, the cost of turning out a dime will drop from 9.5-c- to .6-c- quarters, from 23.6-c- to 1.5-c- and half dollars, from 47.3-c- to 26.5-c-. Revenues from coin manufacture will leap from some $100 million in 1965 to $1 billion by 1967.

House Republicans, eying the new coinage revenues as greedily as a gang of Silverfingers, have suggested that the money be earmarked for specific programs such as combatting the drought in the Northeastern U.S. or reducing the federal debt. Last week President Johnson dimmed their hopes with a report by a special study team that included Treasury Secretary Henry Fowler, Director of the Budget Charles Schultze and Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Gardner Ackley; it pointed out that the exact amount of the new revenues would vary with the demand for coins, thus could not be depended upon to meet the needs of any single program. That said, the committee promised to report back on Dec. 1 with concrete recommendations on how to spend the windfall.

*Stored at the U.S. Bullion Depository at West Point, N.Y., it now totals 938.6 million ounces.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.