Lori Falce: Coin shortage is circulation problem

You might be hearing about a coin shortage.

Businesses that often depend on cash — or specifically on the little discs of zinc and nickel and copper that form those smallest molecules of our currency system — have reported trouble getting enough to keep going as usual. Quarters keep the washing machines spinning in laundromats and provide the change for grocery customers.

It’s a physical manifestation of the toll the coronavirus pandemic has taken on the economy. Just like with medical symptoms of the disease such as strokes, blood clots and covid toes, it’s all about circulation.

It isn’t that coins have disappeared. It’s that they are clogged up in some places — jars on dressers and cup holders in cars — and not flowing through the cash registers and vending machines that they were in February. People have still spent pennies and dimes. They have just been virtual ones, spent via cash apps and credit cards, the social distancing method of money transfer.

Not every business is affected, but from the Federal Reserve to small coin-based operations to large chains like Giant Eagle, the reality of it is confirmed.

But sometimes people don’t believe what they don’t see.

A friend of a friend shared a picture on Facebook of rolls and rolls of coins that she said proved the shortage was made up. It’s the media, she said. It’s just another story. You can’t trust them.

Well, ouch. That hurt.

The thing is, just like the coin shortage, disbelief is also a circulation problem. Its most common symptom is responding to just a headline or a single sentence or a photograph without reading the whole article.

If your grocery store is not doing what some, like national chain Kroger, are doing — by not giving change or giving it on a gift card — maybe you aren’t noticing a coin problem. Maybe you were already doing your shopping with a debit card and didn’t notice an issue.

That doesn’t mean that Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell (appointed by Trump) was wrong when he said, “What’s happened is that, with the partial closure of the economy, the flow of coins through the economy has gotten all — it’s kind of stopped.”

It doesn’t mean media were making it up when Walmart, the largest in-person retailer in the country, asks customers to use exact change or pay with a card if possible.

What we really need to circulate is information — complete information. More than that, we need to circulate a little more understanding. We need comprehension. We could also use a little compassion for the people experiencing things we aren’t.

Because coins aren’t the only things in short supply.