> > 2. The lowest monetary denomination in NZ (and in Australia) is not the penny or the pence.
> > Whatever it is, it is not the 1¢/1p coin, because neither country has the latter. Or so
> > the magazine claimed. Heh.
>
> The smallest coin in Australia is the five cent coin. We used to have one and two cent coins, but they got phased out, possibly because, what with inflation and all, you can't buy anything for less than five cents any more. (Oddly enough, shops still give things prices that aren't evenly divisible by five.)
>
> Don't know about New Zealand, though.
>
> Paul

In the US of A we have a metric money system(thanks to Thomas Jefferson, who insisted on it).
The basic unit is the dollar, which is worth ten dimes, which is worth ten cents, which is worth ten mils. So a dollar is 1000 mils. We don't really have a penny, but most people call the one cent coin a penny. We also have quarters and nickels to make up for the fact that we have never had a coin for a mil. Sometimes law-makers in the US use mils in tax bills, but it can cause some rounding off. The one cent coin is becoming rather useless these days because it won't buy anything. It even takes five of them to buy a nickle, which won't buy anything either.
The US has minted lots of dollar coins, but nobody ever uses them. They just drop them in the sock drawer with the half-dollars that haven't been used much in decades.
Our folding money is something else again. We have lots of dollar bills. It takes five of them to buy $5 bill, which is called a fin or a five-spot, or sometimes a fiver, which is a term we borrowed from the British. Then we have the $10 bill which is called a Hamilton, or a sawbuck. The $20 bill is usually called a twenty, which shows you they Americans have a limited imagination. $50 bills are usually called fifties, which is further proof of the limited imagination theory. $100 bulls are called C notes. And $1000 bills, which are so big even drug dealers don't use them, are called a grand or a big one. The last one I saw was in 1946. It was also the first one I saw.
In the dim dark distant past the US had half-cents, half dimes, five and twenty dollar gold coins, and dollar coins cut into eight pieces called bits. Don't ask me where I learned all this stuff about money. I sure don't have any.
How"The 11th commandment: He who has a car, a truck and a row of motorscooter shall have no money."ard