United States Mint to switch to chocolate coinage

Move expected to sweeten economy

Luke Attmi
La Lune de la presse internationale

WASHINGTON, D.C.

The US Mint announced late Friday that starting this summer new US coinage would be issued in solid chocolate. The move comes as metals prices continue to increase and the Federal Reserve is launching a 24-hour cable news channel featuring constant footage of money being printed.

"We felt this was a way to show America that our economy can remain strong," said US Treasury spokesman William Akemoore. "Since the metal value of pennies and nickels now far exceeds their nominal value, we think switching to a chocolate-based coinage will allow for price stabilization. We hope that consumers will not hold on to the new coins for too long, since doing that will likely melt them into one large sticky mass of liquid chocolate. So Americans will now have to spend their change quickly if they don't want it to melt. This will most certainly boost the economy."

The US Mint plans to take all obsolete metal coinage out of circulation by mid-summer. The plan is to scrap the metal and sell it to China for about 25% of its market value in exchange for valuable US Treasury bonds.

The new coins will be wrapped in a gold-colored foil that the Mint hopes will dupe an overwhelming majority of Americans into thinking the coins have some metal value.

Wal-Mart will be participating in the move, launching a new "Change We Can Believe In" advertising campaign in its stores to restore faith in American coinage and increase consumer confidence.

Critics of the switch have underlined the diminishing value of the US dollar, the Federal Reserve's relentless money printing and inflation, which in theory could be brought under control through debt reduction and backing the currency with tangible goods and assets, such as precious metals.

"That's just simply doubleplusungoodthink," explained Akemoore. "Obviously we're working to help restore the American economy. We've got other major problems to deal with, and Americans should be focusing their energy on those instead: terrorism, crimethink, and sexcrime continue to be the major issues in America today. We need to restore our currency system so that we can continue to fund joycamps around the country and win the war in Eurasia. Switching over to a chocolate-based coinage system is a major step in the right direction."