"The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified."
– President Barack Obama, Inauguration, 1/20/09
A while ago, I had posted that the US Government had decided, at a cost of about $600 million, to mint $1 Billion in dollar coins. At the time, I thought it was a vast waste of time, effort, and our money – Govt not understanding what the private marketplace wanted or needed. The only good they seemed to be for was to act as a platform for dust motes.
That still stands, but now the private marketplace has figured out how to leverage the government mistake for their own benefit:
But the coins have found at least one group of fans: Travel enthusiasts who buy thousands of dollar coins with credit cards that award frequent-flier miles for purchases.??Once in possession of the coins — shipped to them by the government for free — they can deposit them into their bank accounts and pay off the credit card bills. The result: a free ticket to anywhere.
The problem is that even if so-called “travel hackers” like Liaw put some of the coins in circulation, their purchases from the Mint contribute to a huge and growing buildup of one-dollar coins in Federal Reserve vaults.
Buy coins, ship for free, deposit for free, fly for free.
All on the taxpayer dime dollar…
