Penny Shortage Forces McDonald’s to “Round Down for Freedom”; Children’s Piggy Banks Declared Strategic Reserves

(Worthy Satire) – As America’s penny shortage deepens, businesses from McDonald’s to Mom-and-Pop diners are being forced to rethink how they make change — and how to face the grim new reality that a single copper coin is now worth more than most crypto.

The fast-food giant McDonald’s announced that select franchises will begin rounding totals “in favor of liberty,” sometimes up, sometimes down, depending on how patriotic the cashier feels that day. “If George Washington were here, he’d say, ‘Keep the change,'” said one franchise owner in Des Moines. “Besides, who wants to dig through a drawer for 97 cents in loose metal anymore?”

Meanwhile, across the nation, desperate consumers have turned to a previously untapped financial institution: the household piggy bank. Once symbols of childhood thrift, these ceramic swine have become the Fort Knox of America’s copper crisis. Reports indicate parents have been seen wielding butter knives and crowbars, cracking open years of birthday savings to fund exact-change transactions and drive-thru coffee runs.

“I told my son we were taking out a small loan from his college fund,” said one father while prying open a ceramic dinosaur. “It’s called financial literacy.”

The U.S. Mint has urged calm, insisting that new pennies are being produced “at a heroic rate,” though insiders admit that rising metal costs mean each one now costs 3.5 cents to make. Economists warn that the crisis could spiral if Americans continue to hoard change, predicting an underground black market where pennies trade for their weight in silver and “loose change” becomes literal currency again.

In related news, economists have upgraded the status of “find a penny, pick it up” from superstition to national economic policy.

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