Josh Barro, Columnist

You'll Have to Pry This Dollar Bill From My Cold, Dead Hands

November 30, 2012 at 5:26 PM UTC

Josh Barro is the lead writer for the Ticker, Bloomberg View's blog on economics, finance and politics. His primary areas of interest include tax and fiscal policy, state and local government, and planning and land use. Previously, Barro was a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and a commercial real estate banker at Wells Fargo. He holds a bachelor's degree in psychology from Harvard and lives in Queens, New York.

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As seems to happen every few years, there's another report out from a federalagency urging the U.S. to withdraw $1 bills from circulation and replace themwith coins. The arguments are always the same: Coins last longer! We'd save abunch of money! Everyone else is doing it!

Switching to dollar coins is a dumb idea, and I'm glad to see that a memberof Congress has finally, succinctly explained why. The AP reports: