Canada is removing the penny from its currency from next year after the government announced that one cent pieces are too expensive to produce…

Each 1 cent, made from either copper-plated zinc (1997-1999 coins) or copper plated steel (2000-2012 coins) costs around 1.6 cents to produce, and scrapping them will save an estimated $11 million Canadian dollars a year…

Jim Flaherty, the Canadian finance minister, told the Canadian House of Commons: “Pennies take up too much space on our dressers at home. They take up far too much time for small businesses trying to grow and create jobs.”

The Royal Canadian Mint will produce its final penny next month, and stop providing the coin to banks and financial institutions in the autumn.

Pennies will remain legal tender, but the government said it hoped most people would turn them in to be recycled as scrap metal. Their use will become largely redundant, as companies and retailers have been told to begin rounding up sums to the nearest nickel (five cents)…

Pennies are not the only form of currency to be vanishing – Canada has already begun phasing out paper bank notes, replacing high domination bills with plastic versions.

Perish the thought we should exhibit a combination of modern thought and old-fashioned frugality inside Congress. Our elected blowhards have been prattling about doing something similar for decades. Up-to-Beltway-standard, nothing has been accomplished.

In the last 35 years or so, Phillipines, Sweden, UK, New Zealand, Mexico, Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Israel, Netherlands, Hungary, Brazil, Argentina, India, Singapore and Papua New Guinea have done something similar. By the time the United States Congress authorizes a small sensible task like this we’ll already be making money transfers by quantum mental telepathy.