The United States needs to stop minting pennies.
According to the United States Mint's official website, between the months of January 2012 and April 2012, 1957.6 million pennies were produced in Denver and Philadelphia. Each one of those pennies cost 2.4 cents to make in 2011, while only returning one cent for each. Assuming that neither the cost of zinc nor copper changed, then we have lost $2,740,640,000 alone in the production of only four months worth of pennies. If this continues, the government will lose $8,221,920,000 this year alone on making pennies!
Sources:
US mint:
http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_mint/coin_production/index.cfm?action=pr...
CNN article:
http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/15/news/economy/pennies_nickels/index.htm