A quick review: we have the penny -- that's 1 cent. Then we have the nickel, aka 5 cents. The dime follows at 10 cents, and the quarter, the mightiest of the change, comes in at 25 cents.
At 100 cents, they tried to push us another coin, but no matter how many Indians, women or presidents they put on it, we still prefer the dollar, and thus paper currency begins to rule.
We have the $1 bill, the oft forgotten $2 bill, then the $5, the $10 and the $20. At the top of the US monetary chain sits the $100, which for quite some time is the largest paper money a man can handle.
What is the logic behind this system? The most glaring fault (outside of the much maligned $2 bill) is that in change we have a 25 cent piece but in paper the bill is 20. Systematically, these two counterparts between paper and metal should be brethren, but somewhere along the way the paper brother lost a chromosome.
But look at is this way: it takes 5 pennies to make a nickel, 2 nickels to make a dime, 2.5 dimes (oh the peril!) to make a quarter, and 4 quarters to make a dollar. It takes five dollars to make a $5 bill, two $5 bills to make a $10, two $10 bills to make a $20 and five $20 bills to make a Benji.
The real kink in this chain is anything of the denomination of 10. Without a dime, change would go from a penny times FIVE to make a nickel, times FIVE to make a quarter, times FOUR to make a dollar. Logical right? Paper would look like this: a dollar times FIVE to get a $5, times FOUR to get a $20, times FIVE to get a hundo. Logical right?
Which brings me to my real point. FUCK F.D.R. and FUCK HAMILTON!!
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