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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.
What the hell is paper money? Is that what my parents used to buy things?
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, with both size and color the same, foreigners have a hard time differenciating between the bills.
One would think the big number in each corner would be a pretty big giveaway as to the bill's value.
:-)
I'm all for color on our bills. Our money is pretty boring compared to "exciting" foreign money.
But then, when it come to money, I'll all for boring. When "exciting" and "money" are used in the same sentence, it usually means I'm losing my ass.
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?
Now I can use every color in my ink cartridge.
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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
Now strippers can tell what I'm throwing on the table at a glance.
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.
Apparently, with both size and color the same, foreigners have a hard time differenciating between the bills
The Federal Reserve announced they would also hire outside consultants from Parker Brothers.
---Lane
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."
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
As one of those "foreigners" who now lives in the US, I've often wondered how blind people operate here? All the bills are the same size. If you can't see what's written on the bill, how do you know if you've just offered a $1 bill or a $100 bill to the checkout clerk? How can you check your change?
Its not just the blind. Imagine being able to put your hand in your pocket and know how much cash you have just by feel. That's cool. No more standing on a dark street corner in the bad part of town counting through notes to know if you have enough for a beer/cab home/meal/whatever.
Virtually every other country has different sizes for notes of different amount. This seems like such an obvious and useful thing, I'm amazed that the US hasn't adopted it? Is this the ultimate Not Invented Here syndrome?
Sailing over the event horizon
Brazilian 1: "Look at all that pink and purple."
Brazilian 2: "Our money sure is gay."
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.
US currency does not use phoenecian numerals. While the place system of our numbering system borrows heavily from the phoenecians, the numerals themselves look quite different. Perhaps you were thinking of arabic numerals?
See Proposal for encoding the Phoenician script in ISO/IEC 10646 for a visual depiction of what phoenecian numerals look like.
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?
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You cannot wash away blood with blood
That would lead to the most valuable denominations having the most subtle color variations. The new colors will be based on a proven scheme most Americans are familiar with:
$1 white
5 pink
10 yellow
20 green
50 blue
100 gold
500 bronze
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.
Just as I'm about to finish the script for my live-action adaptation of Danger Mouse, I learn that we're changing our money. Great.
So now the name Silas Greenback will be an antiquated reference and the villainous character will have to be changed to reflect whatever color the government finally chooses. It will change the entire dynamic of the show, since the name "Greenback" made since because he is GREEDY and therefore desires MONEY, and because he is a FROG. A GREEN FROG.
I just hope they don't choose pink...because then the villain will have to be a Flamingo in order for the name to work. And there's already a bird villain in the show - the nefarious Stiletto! Not to mention Mad Manuel, "the Flamenco assassin", which sounds entirely too much like flamingo.
Thanks for ruining Danger Mouse, you feds!
Considering the cost of ink cartridges i don't think it will be very profitable.
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.
Boy am I humiliated. Up till now I thought my 6" money was quite adequate.
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Now that we're pretty close to having LCD paper, and wireless internet access in every major city, I'm all for the next generation of money having LCD hologram foil that has a full 3-D animation of George W (or whomever is President when it's "printed") waving out from each bill. Whenever you're in range of a wireless network, the hologram can be updated to meet the current political climate, and of course banner ads can scroll between the large flashing colored denomination symbols. (Quickly pulsing red ball means $50, slower green pyramid means $20).
Now if they can get integrated micro-foil speakers too, we can have money that talks to us and cries "Spend Me!", "I've been in your wallet for 3 days, Don't you need more Cheezy-Poofs?"
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.
.....
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
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.
Anyone have a picture of one of the new bills? Preferrably a large tiff image, around 2400 dpi, front and back...something I could print at the local Kinkos?
... then I remembered what my sig was after posting that, so at least *I* got a laugh out of it ...
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Let's go whole hog and make money in powers of 2.
$1, $2, $4, $8, etc. denominations.
It would make it so much easier for geeks to count, and make writing software for ATMs so much simpler.
;)
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
From a marketing standpoint, the greenish color scheme has fantastic brand awareness.
Good point - we wouldn't want people to start using competing U.S. currencies. Seriously, you sat through too many marketing classes if you think U.S. currency needs brand awareness to be valuable.
The Oz mint makes polymer currency, complete with a hologram encrusted window, for Australia, Thailand, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Indonesia, Kuwait, Western Samoa, New Zealand and Romania.
The polymer sheeting is made from in a huge complex where balloons with about the same volume as a WWII aircraft carrier, or something, are blown out from melted polymer in a huge complex. I read a good article on the process in the Sydney Morning Herald's Good Weekend section about a year ago.
Here's some links
Oz Dept of Foriegn Affairs 'n Trade
Note Printing Australia
ABC News (the US ABC that is)
Another ABC page
Oz Reserve Bank currency page
Securency PTY LTD
Currency 'how are they made?' page
RBA Polymer page