The Fed crumbles around us

Harold has challenged me to come up with another piece on the Federal Reserve System, which has been on the news daily for the last year at least. Sadly I can't come up with anything right now that has not already been stated in previous posts. I will add, however, that I have been trading every FRN I can spare from my minimum-wage paycheck for silver specie from the local coin store. I did so on Tuesday - I got $2.75 face value (meaning the face value printed on the silver coins adds up to that amount) for $30.10. Wow!

The way it works (according to the gentleman at the coin shop) is this: the coins in question, meaning half-dollars, quarters, and dimes minted in 1964 or before consist of 90% silver. I don't know what the other 10% is, but this was done so the coins would not be soft and wear away. A "dollar" face value is supposed to weigh one troy ounce (which is only 85% of the "normal" ounce the Americans use). So, the guy at the store takes the commodity value of silver on that day (it was $17.83 on Tuesday I think) and multiplies it by 0.715 to get the cost of one "dollar's" weight of silver, which came out to be $12.75. This is what he charges me: apparently he profits off those poor souls who have been so harmed by the Fed in recent years that they have been selling their silver - not a good long-term plan, in my opinion, but I guess it beats losing your home....
Now, hopefully at least a few of you are saying what I said: 85% of 90% of 1.00 comes out to be 0.765, not 0.715, so what accounts for the difference? He couldn't answer the question (I think I confused him) but I suspect it represents the cost of the energy it would take to melt it down and extract the pure silver. He called this number the "melt value".

I would also like to point out an often overlooked benefit of restoring silver to our currency: public health. The fact is that silver has potent anti-biotic properties and will inhibit the growth of bacteria and other microorganisms in a petri dish. (So does gold, but I cannot afford gold....) Thus, the use of silver currency would tend to greatly reduce the transmission of bacteria from one human to another in everyday commerce. Contrast this with the Fed's greasy "rag money" which is known to harbor such teeming varieties of microorganisms that all fast-food employees are admonished never to touch food after operating the cash register unless they have properly sanitized their hands!