Would you take that in 70 trillion pennies, Mr. Paulson?

For a guy who needs only three pages to demand $700 billion, Henry Paulson sure has a penchant for talking pennies. Paulson reassured Americans this week that anyone with savings of less than $100,000 ”won’t lose a penny” under his bailout plan. Americans inclined to doubt Paulson and the FDIC might be reassured by this astute observation: “The penny is worth less than any other currency.”

The U.S. Secretary of the Treasury made that demonstrably true statement during a radio interview last February in which he dissed the one-cent coin, calling it costly to produce and saying he’d do away with the lowly penny if its demise were “politically doable.”

Paulson may yet have his way with Congress when it comes to trillion-dollar checks, but on Monday Congress scored a symbolic victory over penny-haters like Paulson when Paulson’s own U.S. Mint announced four congressionally authorized new designs for the back side of next year’s new pennies.

Designers have readied images representing four stages of Lincoln’s life — but not, inexplicably, for a planned fifth in the series showing Lincoln’s role in preserving the United States of America “as a single and united country.” The delay does not, it can be hoped, reflect a cautious approach on Paulson’s part to stamping into good copper what could, in a near, post-financial meltdown future, be an obsolete theme.

Four years ago, when Congress passed the bill to put five stages of President Abraham Lincoln’s life on the back of the penny, the director of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission gushed that it would “delight Americans as they go about their daily transactions.”

Now that Paulson’s pronouncements have them pinching pennies with daily-increasing desperation, Americans may indeed take delight wherever they can — with even Honest Abe’s humble log cabin looking pretty cush to the growing legions of the laid-off and the foreclosed-upon. But given Paulson’s anti-penny proclivities, any such delight would probably strike him as irrational exuberance.

Also included in the 2005 new-penny legislation is a series of $1 coins commemorating U.S. presidents that’s already underway, along with a companion series of $10 gold coins commemorating their wives (or Lady Liberty for presidents who lacked wives), with designs on the flipside highlighting something from the First Ladies’ lives.

The “First Spouse” series (as it’s called in apparent deference to future First Dudes) makes converting one’s life savings into gold much handier for those of modest means. It also looks back to an ancient Roman tradition going back to Cleopatra and Livia, the (second) wife of the emperor Augustus. Oddly, looking forward, the Mint’s schedule has the ”First Spouse” series ending with Pat Nixon, while the presidents will run through Gerald Ford — in avoidance of a Betty Ford Clinic design, perhaps?

It’s a shame, because at least two potential future First Spouses seem to be all ready for their star turns in gold.