Pandemic leads to national coin shortage; Federal Reserve task force created to help

[DesertRat]

At fast-food restaurants, supermarkets, banks and other businesses across the country where cash normally changes hands, customers are being warned that coins are in short supply.
{snip}
The apparent absence of enough coins in the nation's marketplace has so alarmed the federal government that last month the Federal Reserve established a U.S. Coin Task Force to "mitigate the effects of low coin inventories caused by the COVID-19 pandemic."

The 22 members of the task force were announced Friday, representing government agencies, banks and businesses, and they will meet this month with the goal of sharing recommendations in early August to identify "actionable steps that supply chain participants can take to address the current coin circulation issue."

Daniel Soques, an assistant professor of economics at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, called the situation a "perfect storm" of circumstances born out of the pandemic, during which businesses that deal heavily in coins, such as laundromats, may have closed, while the fear of getting the coronavirus by touching currency may have spurred people to avoid physical monetary transactions altogether. Coinstar, which operates about 22,000 coin-cashing kiosks nationwide, said volume slowed amid state and city lockdowns. New coin production was also hampered at the U.S. Mint's production facilities in March and April.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/pandemic-leads-national-coin-shortage-federal-reserve-task-force-created-n1233907

[roamer65]

1. Start rolling your coins and take them to banks, folks.

[customerserviceguy]

4. The banks around here

don't want you to put coins through the tubes in the drive through. And I'll be damned if I'm going in the lobby.

I guess a good way of getting them back into circulation would be to use self-checkouts at grocery stores, but I'd rather gie a worker a job. Besides, it always flummoxes me when I go to ring up produce on those things, and that forms a sizable proportion of my market basket these days.

[kas125]

9. Around here the self checkouts have only taken cards for at

least three weeks now because of the coin shortage.

[lettucebe]

2. How is this not The Onion? We need a task force for this?

I heard/read the mint had stopped production of coins. Problem solved. This does not need a bunch of eggheads thinking it over

[DesertRat]

5. I agree, we don't need a task force for this

[Tanuki]

3. I got a roll of quarters at my bank drive-through yesterday. There was no problem

Last edited Thu Jul 16, 2020, 02:41 PM - Edit history (1)

getting just the one roll, but the teller mentioned the shortage, just in a casual conversational way. I haven't been using cash in the past few months and had gone through all of my coins for the occasional parking meter.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

6. I've been reading about the coin shortage for several weeks now.

What surprises me the most is that I'd come to think I was the only person left in the entire country who pays cash for stuff. I know far too many younger people who never have any cash on them at all, ever. They use credit or debit card for everything, and then can't figure out why they can't make ends meet.

[bottomofthehill]

7. Even more amazing than credit and debit

Apple Pay and the like where they just wave their phone and they are done.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

8. Yeah, I've seen that also.

I am not going to do that any time soon.

For one thing, using cash for day to day purchases is a very good way to keep track of your money and not spend what you don't have.