Functions
The Mint manages extensive commercial marketing programs. The product line includes special coin sets for collectors, national medals, American Eagle gold, silver and platinum bullion coins, and commemorative coins marking national events such as the Bicentennial of the Constitution. The Mint's functions include:
- Producing domestic, bullion and foreign coins;
- Manufacturing and selling national commemorative medals;
- Designing and producing the congressional gold medals;
- Designing, producing, and marketing special coinage;
- Safeguarding and controlling the movement of bullion;
- Disbursing gold and silver for authorized purposes;
- Distributing coins from the various mints to Federal Reserve Banks.
Note that the Mint is not responsible for the production of paper money; that is the responsibility of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
In 2000, the Mint was responsible for the production of 28 billion coins. See United States Mint coin production for annual production values of each coin.
The United States Mint Police, a federal law enforcement agency, is responsible for protection of Mint facilities, employees and reserves.
Read more about this topic: United States Mint
Famous quotes containing the word functions:
“Let us stop being afraid. Of our own thoughts, our own minds. Of madness, our own or others’. Stop being afraid of the mind itself, its astonishing functions and fandangos, its complications and simplifications, the wonderful operation of its machinery—more wonderful because it is not machinery at all or predictable.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)
“If photography is allowed to stand in for art in some of its functions it will soon supplant or corrupt it completely thanks to the natural support it will find in the stupidity of the multitude. It must return to its real task, which is to be the servant of the sciences and the arts, but the very humble servant, like printing and shorthand which have neither created nor supplanted literature.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“The English masses are lovable: they are kind, decent, tolerant, practical and not stupid. The tragedy is that there are too many of them, and that they are aimless, having outgrown the servile functions for which they were encouraged to multiply. One day these huge crowds will have to seize power because there will be nothing else for them to do, and yet they neither demand power nor are ready to make use of it; they will learn only to be bored in a new way.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)