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Greenbacks No More
Chacham writes "The Financial Times has an article about the US adding colors to some denominations of US currency. Apparently, with both size and color the same, foreigners have a hard time differenciating between the bills.I still haven't gotten used to the larger pictures. And now this? As Kermit the frog sang, It's not easy being green." The Federal Reserve has a press release. At least there's no mention of RFID tags.
In the UK, paper notes all have a brightly coloured square/triangle/circle etc. which help people who are partially sighted identify them. They're also slightly different sizes to help completely blind people identify the differences.
Apparently, up until now people in the US are patriotic to the extreme and can't stand to see their precious 'greenbacks' changed.. so it's about time this happened.. Let's hope they don't encounter too much resistance eh?
The Treasury and Federal Reserve now changes the design of the currency every seven to 10 years to try to deter counterfeiters.
I would think that a number of different designs circulating for a single denomination of currency would infact make it easier to get away with counterfeiting. People would be less familiar with the design of the bill and be more likely to discount inconsistencies in the design by the fact that it is a different circulation.
I stole this Sig
Although I'm English, I've lived in the USA for a few years, on and off, and *still* find the homogeneity of the bank notes to be irritating. One shouldn't have to check twice that one isn't handing over a twenty instead of a dollar bill; besides which, it's just a *token* -- it doesn't *mean* anything, really. I say this simply because people get way too caught up on the perceived importance of things like this - the obvious example being those Europeans whose principal argument against the Euro has nothing to do with financial stability, but is instead concerned with such ridiculous notions as "tradition" and "national pride".
But I digress. Different American bank notes *are* difficult to distinguish between, and I'm not surprised that this is a concern when it comes to the ease of counterfeiting, either.
And if I'm rambling incoherently, it's because of staying up all night only to watch England lose. Bah.
Remember, most people from other countries can tell the denominations of bills apart by just a quick glance at their color.
Imagine growing up, always having color as an identifying mark for currency. Suddenly, you're somewhere else, you pull out your money, and it's all the same color! Sure, they can look at it, but it's more effort than they're used to. Sure, not that much effort overall, but when you're used to one thing, and you have to do a little more, that can really throw you off.
Go try dialing a rotary phone, and see if you don't find it annoying just because of the time difference.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Well, with about 100 posts so far, I see about half from non-Americans, with legit reasons why the US should use this system, and about half from Americans, basically saying fsck the foreigners...they need to learn to read the numbers...etc.
It speaks volumes about our (Americans') culture and attitude towards the rest of the world as a society, and yes, I'm American.
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
Go to any country in the world. Give away a $1, $20 or $100 to whoever wants one. See how many $1 bills you actually give away. See how many $100 bills you actually give away.
If you give away anything but $100 bills, then I'll believe foreigners can't tell American money apart.
Right this second, I have a pocketful of Australian and Singaporean money. (Just got back from a trip.) At a glance, I can't tell the Aussie dollars from the Singapore dollars. They're both fairly brightly colored, but they're differently colored in an inconsistent way. In other words, an Aussie $5 bill is easy to distinguish from an Aussie $10 bill, but hard to distinguish-- at a glance-- from a Singapore $5 bill.
So it's two sides of the same coin, ha ha. It'd be a challenge to make the US dollar bills look different from one another while preventing them from looking like the bills of other countries.
I've seen enough americans here saying "read the fscking number". but what when the bills are inside a wallet, or purse ?
you have to take all the bills out to read the numbers ? oh, but there's the images, right ? wrong. except for the 1 dolar bill I have no fucking clue of who is in each bill. inside a wallet all of them look the same to me.
now with colors at least I'll know that they're diferent, and it'll be easier to associate the colors with the face value if I ever go to US.
face it, from all the so called "civilized" countries, US is way behind in terms of currency printing technology.
What ? Me, worry ?
Personally, I'm all for the change. But there is something that no one has pointed out yet: The enormous cost of new capital machinery.
Many years ago I worked for Coca-Cola, who had 1 million plus vending machines with dollar bill acceptors in South East Wisconsin. Figuring the hard costs alone of new bill validators at 20 million bucks, you can bet there are going will be some VERY strong lobbying when these proposed changes start getting discussed.
.....
Not just new hued (i.e. not bright colours, but various hues) bills but magentic inks, water-spots, metal foil sown into the fiber, various printing methods (for a tactial feel to the blind). Other countries such as Canada have introduced braille for the blind.
The braille is also good for check your pockets at the bars before offering to buy the next round of beer. While in Britian I had my first exposure to different sized bills, and I found it useful to be able to assess at a glance what is in my wallet, and to double check the change from the taxis driver after a night out. Too often you cannot read the bills since it is dark, and taxis are pretty horrid at having burnt out interior lights.
Of course many people will be distracted by the "national image", the real issues of harder to make a quality counterfeit it to the benefit of the US economy, and just about everyone in the US except criminals and the CIA (who have been accused of counterfeiting, but never proven).
For those who cannot understand the tourist angle. I suspect that is a PR claim, but visitors are not only dealing with a new currency, they are often using a second, third, or fifth language, and also trying to do currency conversion to their native currency when shopping and trying to budget their trip. There are those shop keepers and tourist industry people who try to take advanage of the similiar appearance. I'm know that there has been more than a couple bait-and-switch cases of people doing much like a card trick when giving back change; to not just tourists but everyday Americians.
Here in Canada, it's pretty easy" 5's are blue, 10's are purple, 20's are green and 50's are red. and 100's are brown. (this used to cause problem for some people when we still had 2's -- which were orange. Under sodium lights, you actually had to look at the numbers, or risk paying $100 for a $2 item).
It's not that I have lost the ability to read number, but why??? I look at the crumpled bill that I pull from my pocket, and I can tel by the blue bits all over it that i've got a 5. No need to unfold it to find the silly number, and no need to make sure that there isn't an extra '0' after the '5'.
If a bill falls out of my pocket in the wind, I can tell at a glance if it's worth chasing after. In a good wind, a blue $5 isn't worth trying to catch... If it's red, I'll be willing to chace that $50 for a couple of blocks.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.