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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.
Well, here in Canada, we've had funny-looking money for ages. It was supposed to help cut down on counterfeiters, but bubble-jets keep getting better - they're even cloning the $5 bills now!
apparently we were the first country to use polymer notes...
two good links are here and here
and this shows all our polymer notes
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no sig for you
The problem with currency changes is that you have old currency in circulation. I went to Ray's Pizza in Lower Manhattan and the man behind the counter had recently come here and had not seen the "OLD" 20's -- and thought my bill (gotten from an ATM that morning) was faked. In any situation where new currency is issued, the gov. needs to assure a "waiting period" in which you can freely trade in old bills for new ones and get the old ones off the streets. The whole point of the "new" bills is to prevent fakes -- as of right now, you can still get an old fake, rough it up, and use it on the street. Plus, old greek men will think you're trying to cheat them, even when you arent. (No greeks were harmed in the writing of this post)
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
I used to work for the treasury department, and back about 10 years ago they were working extensively with the FBI to improve on the ability to track down money laundering and counterfeiting.
The biggest thing heading our way in that department is a nationally linked serial number scanning system. Basically, since virtually all stores have laser scanners already, and a strong desire to avoid getting fed counterfeits (since they lose the counterfeit money without reparation), stores will be offered the opportunity to scan the money you hand them, and have a unique serial number checked against a national database. Money being used at multiple locations at the same time can be flagged as counterfeit, and refused by the stores.
The big benefit to the FBI comes when they can then follow money virtually every time it is spent. It can even be correlated with time stamped receipts at the stores to see what was bought.
A portion of this system is already in place in a number of banks, which have better scanners that work with the existing money supply, but in the next generation of currency, there will be a small bar code on the upper right edge of the currency for this purpose.
Its a pretty cool system, and should really help to cut down on organized crime.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Given that money is meant to be representational, and given that the different bills represent entirely different amounts, it only makes sense to distinguish them from one another as much as possible.
I once met someone working within the US treasury and took the opportunity to ask him why they didn't take advantage of color printing. He reckoned that it was politics more than anything else; no politician wanted to be the one to suggest changing something with which Americans identify so strongly. I guess it's a bit like the British being sentimental about the pound despite all the jobs and markets they're losing to Ireland and the other countries who've adopted the Euro.
While they're at it, howsabout some real change in the bills - like changing who's on them?
Start with the $20. Jackson. How did this genocidal maniac, who laid the seeds of the Trail of Tears, who shattered the Constitutional balance of power by ignoring rulings of the Supreme Court, who appointed Taney (who authored the Dred Scott decision) to that same court, end up honored with a place on our money?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I'm against adding color to the bills. The US dollar is the most accepted, stable currency in the world. It may be "boring", but it's trusted. From a marketing standpoint, the greenish color scheme has fantastic brand awareness. People know it's US currency just by glancing at it. We will do our monetary system a disservice by trashing this brand
Miko O'Sullivan
Actually, I don't know what you're talking about, and I'm familiar with french numbers. The only thing I can think of is that 70 is called "sixty-ten" and 71 is "sixty-eleven" etc. And 80 is "four-twenties" and 90 is "four-twenties-ten", but for numbers 50 and below, I have no idea what you're talking about.
I don't know where you get the idea that it's deliberately for "foreigners"... I heard this story on the radio a month ago, and the story definitely mentioned it was to make counterfeiting more difficult.
The newest Canadian bills are not only different colours, but they have braille, a special glossy maple leaf overlay, and a bunch of pressed on 'dots' which, with some difficulty, can be peeled off to prove they are not just printed on. All of these things (except, perhaps, the braille) are primarily to stop counterfeiting.
... and guess what: I use both Canadian and U.S. currency every day, and the different colours of Canadian money make it wayyy easier to differentiate different denominations.
Consider this, many times, you just went to a bank machine and got $100 as five $20 bills. Then you buy a pack of gum to break one of the twenties. Later, when you go to pay for something that's $4.95, and you want to find that $5 bill you know is in your wallet, it's MUCH easier to just look for a blue piece of paper, rather than looking at the writing on each individual bill. Maybe it only saves you 5 or 10 seconds, but if you're in a line with 5 or 10 people, and each person takes 5 or 10 seconds longer, that adds up over the course of a day.
Besides that, twice in the last two years, someone giving me change in the U.S. has tried to pass off a $1 as a $10. I noticed it, but I wonder how many times they actually succeed?
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Advantages:
Vastly more efficient recognition of denominations.
Easier to use for the poor-sighted.
Denominations can be recognised at a distance by merely a brief glance.
Disadvantages:
It's what everyone's used to.
The advantages vastly outweigh the disadvantages. And I'm sorry, but calling everyone stupid for not wanting to stop and read every single note does not count as an argument against the coloured notes.
"Wait, was that a $20...or a $2...?"
Subtle colors don't do well with me, and I imagine that, unless we start having Peter Max design our money, the colors are going to lean more towards the pastel end of the spectrum.
ObCanadian: I'm married to a Canadian, and I hear this rant about the mono-chromatic money *all* the time. To me, Canadian money looks like I should be using it to put houses on Park Place....
"Just because you're a genius doesn't make you a smart guy!" -- Narrator, Powerpuff Girls
Here are some of the people and things I'd love to see on there instead of what we've currently got:
- the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley or Mt. Ranier
- the Statue of Liberty or the Golden Gate Bridge
- Martin Luther King or Harriet Tubman
- Edgar Allen Poe, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman or John Muir
- Duke Ellington, Aaron Copland or John Coltrane
- beautiful birds like the Eastern Bluebird or the Great Blue Heron (OK, I know we've already got the Bald Eagle)
Imagine a beautiful full color panorama of the Grand Canyon on the back of a 20 instead of the White House... wouldn't that be nicer?The list could go on and on and on... but those are just a few ideas I've had ever since they did the first redesign in the 90's. I guess the US government is too busy trying to create an image of grandeur to actually use symbols that come from the country's cultute and natural heritage.
Don't get me wrong, I think it would be OK to leave guys like Washington and Jefferson on there - they are some of the founders of the country and deserve to be represented. But having some more focus on culture as opposed to government as the things symbolic of our country would be nice. You know, "of the people, by the people, for the people..."
[ fx: whisper, stage left ]
Oh, some people are blind?
It appears that some countries [ hint: "colour", "defence" ] have bills of different sizes... That sounds suspiciously un-American...
Having same colour and same size notes actually costs the US billions in extra cash counting.
Notes have to be sorted first to ensure that a bundle is all 10's for example. In Europe, if a 100 is slipped in by mistake, the counting machine will stop because the note is a different size. In the US, the 100 will get counted as a 10 (or vice versa). Hence fewer mistakes and less sorting time for the coloured and different size notes.
If you want to go ahead pissing money down the drain - be my guest. But don't go all superior and claim we can't read numbers. I can - but poor sighted (not blind) people from anywhere in the world can have problems telling the difference between 10 & 20 dollar bills.
coins on the other hand are a whole different story...
In Scotland, there was a trial with credit card-like replacements for each bill (or each note, as it is called in Britian). I thought it was great - perfectly washable -- for example, I could take my wallet kayaking and not care about getting it wet.
Unfortunately, everyone else hated the idea, so it was dropped.
anything like when Canada introduced the Toonie?
Or the loonie?
Sure we're a small country, but that's still a *very* *big* *change* *in* *money*
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