23 May—On the subject of National Lucky Penny Day, the coin we commonly call the penny is officially called the cent by the United States Mint and the one cent piece—with no hyphen—by the United States Treasury. Since the Mint is a bureau of the Department of the Treasury, you’d expect them to use the same nomenclature. But it’s the government.

Coins, including pennies, are known as specie, from the Latin meaning “in the actual form.” In English, specie is not the singular of species; that’s species, although every now and then you’ll come across specieses. (And medias and datas.) In Latin, however, specie is in fact the ablative singular of species. But that’s totally irrelevant, as well as confusing.

Paper money is commonly called currency, although coins—specie—are also currency, meaning a system of money in circulation for common use, making it current. Thus, all specie is currency, but not all currency is specie.

Paper money is produced by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (the BEP), another bureau of the Treasury. In addition to paper currency, the BEP engraves and prints Treasury securities, military commissions and award certificates, as well as lots of other cards, forms, and documents for government agencies. The BEP is really just a humongous job printer, after all.

Treasury’s other bureaus (or bureaux), by the way, are the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (which is not to be confused with the Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, of course); the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency; the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network; the Internal Revenue Service; and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (which had been the Bureau of the Public Debt and the Financial Management Service until Obama’s administration), which is the government’s non-tax debt collector.

Back on pennies, then, since 1982 the red cent has been copper-plated zinc (97.5% zinc, 2.5% copper). Last year each one(-)cent piece cost 2.72 cents to make. That’s called seigniorage, the profit made by a government by producing and issuing currency. So the penny seigniorage is actually negative, as it is with nickels, each of which costs 10.41 cents.

But don’t despair, because Uncle Sam’s impressive seigniorial profit comes from dimes, quarters, half-dollars (yes, JFK half-dollars are still being minted), and especially from banknotes—paper money. There’s also the lucrative silver, gold, and platinum numismatic market.

Fun fact: The U.S. dollar hasn’t been backed by gold since 1971. There’s close to six trillion dollars in currency currently [sic] in circulation. But it’s fiat money, not backed by any physical asset, only by the full faith and credit of the United States, which, as we know, is questionable at best. So it would take a gold price of about $8,800 per Troy ounce to back all the outstanding U.S. currency with that shiny physical asset. Yesterday gold closed at a little under $2,000.

But, like Alfred E. Neuman, why worry when the government can print and mint money whenever the clowns and whores who mismanage it feel like spending what it doesn’t have at any given moment?