Treasury Goes High-Tech With Redesigned $100 Bills

Hugh Pickens writes "AP reports that as part of an effort to stay ahead of counterfeiters, the Department of the Treasury has designed a high-tech makeover of the $100 bill with a disappearing Liberty Bell in an inkwell and a bright blue security ribbon composed of thousands of tiny lenses that magnify objects in mysterious ways. The new blue security ribbon will give a 3-D effect to the micro-images that the thousands of lenses will be magnifying. Tilt the note back and forth and you will see tiny bells on the ribbon change to 100s as they move. Tilt the note side to side and the images will move up and down."

Comments

time for a change

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to fire up PS 5 and get the good old printer out. I'll make me some money the old fashion way.

Re:time for a change

[PopeRatzo]

I'll make me some money the old fashion way.

I always thought counterfeiting was the only crime that made any sense. Nobody gets hurt, there's no violence involved. You just make it and spend it.

That's probably why the G takes it so seriously. When they catch counterfeiters, they put them under the prison.

Re:time for a change

[paiute]

I'll make me some money the old fashion way.

Ways to spot the bills printed by AC in his Mom's basement:

1. One Hundred Dollars reads One Hunnert Dollars
B. The United States of America reads The Untied State of America
Third. The phrase "Haulin' Ass and Gettin' Paid" does not actually appear on legitimate US currency.

Re:time for a change

[slick7]

sounds like a secret service agent fearing the downsizing monster?

Re:time for a change

[inviolet]

I always thought counterfeiting was the only crime that made any sense. Nobody gets hurt, there's no violence involved. You just make it and spend it.

That's probably why the G takes it so seriously. When they catch counterfeiters, they put them under the prison.

Report to Econ 101 please.

The damage from counterfeiting is inflation. Therefore, counterfeiting is a crime whose damage is divided among all individuals who are holding cash, or who are holding dollar-denominated assets at a fixed interest rate.

That the damage to each victim is very small is a secondary issue that perhaps could be considered at sentencing time.

Re:time for a change

[Anonymous Coward]

So, are you saying that Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke should be arrested?

Re:time for a change

[mitgib]

The damage from counterfeiting is inflation. Therefore, counterfeiting is a crime whose damage is divided among all individuals who are holding cash, or who are holding dollar-denominated assets at a fixed interest rate.

That the damage to each victim is very small is a secondary issue that perhaps could be considered at sentencing time.

Which is why HR1206 and S604 are essential beginnings to end the reign of the largest counterfeiter and thief of American wealth, The Federal Reserve.

Re:time for a change

[inviolet]

Which is why HR1206 and S604 are essential beginnings to end the reign of the largest counterfeiter and thief of American wealth, The Federal Reserve.

The problem with indicting the Fed is this: as the amount of wealth in our society grows, so must the amount of money grow. Otherwise money will be constantly deflating, which is a Bad Thing because it rewards people for sitting on their cash.

Now perhaps we can argue whether the money supply should be grown by the Fed, or by private banks, or by whoever... but the fact remains: we must inflate our currency at about the same rate that we increase our ongoing wealth. Somebody's gotta do it. But not counterfeiters, not for personal gain.

Re:time for a change

[dwiget001]

|| So, are you saying that Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke should be arrested? ||

He might not be saying so directly. However, Henry and Ben being arrested would be a good start, I think.

Re:time for a change

[darkpixel2k]

Nobody gets hurt, there's no violence involved.

Counterfeiting reduces the trust people have in the money.

Counterfeiting? I thought it was government.

Re:time for a change

[ari_j]

Sir, I simply cannot condone your inconsistent numbering scheme. The correct order is 1, B, Fourth, Delta, ... You were really close, but need to learn the pattern better.

Re:time for a change

[darkpixel2k]

Nobody gets hurt, there's no violence involved. You just make it and spend it.

That's probably why the G takes it so

Report to Econ 101 please.

The damage from counterfeiting is inflation. Therefore, counterfeiting is a crime whose damage is divided among all individuals who are holding cash, or who are holding dollar-denominated assets at a fixed interest rate.

That the damage to each victim is very small is a secondary issue that perhaps could be considered at sentencing time.

Fine. We'll take the small inflation done by the counterfeiter, and multiply it times the 300,000,000 people he affected in the US. ;)

Re:time for a change

[ari_j]

I can't wait for H.R. 1206 to pass. A Syrian democracy will do wonders for the federal reserve system. You probably meant H.R. 1207, apparently a companion bill to S. 604 Hope that helps some readers.

Re:time for a change

[darkpixel2k]

The problem with indicting the Fed is this: as the amount of wealth in our society grows, so must the amount of money grow. Otherwise money will be constantly deflating, which is a Bad Thing because it rewards people for sitting on their cash

The other bad thing is that if the fed didn't keep screwing around with the money and causing inflation, the gold I own wouldn't be worth more and more just by sitting on it.

(And don't be pedantic--I know the gold isn't actually worth more itself--just worth more in comparison to the US dollar as it plummets down the drain...)

Re:time for a change

[steelfood]

Third. The phrase "Haulin' Ass and Gettin' Paid" does not actually appear on legitimate US currency.

But it sure as hell would be cooler than that generic and boring "In God We Trust". Hell, every denomination should have its own tagline. Like "Payin' to Play" on the 20 and "Don't Forget to Tip" on the 1.

Re:time for a change

[Myopic]

I don't think "counterfeit" and "thief" mean what you think they mean.

Re:time for a change

[mitgib]

Right you are, silly fat fingers, thanks for the correction.

Re:time for a change

[T-Bone-T]

Don't forget to multiply by the number of counterfeiters!

Re:time for a change

[JesseMcDonald]

The damage from counterfeiting is inflation.

Inflation—more generally, any increase in the supply of any good leading to its devaluation—is not damage. Everyone has a right to their dollars, but, as with any good, no one has a right to receive any specific price for those dollars in the marketplace.

The problem is that people, with the strong encouragement of governments, insist on treating as a stable store of value objects which have essentially no direct use valued in proportional to the price paid for them, not even as raw material, and which thus only command a nonzero price due to the artificial scarcity granted them via enforcement of anti-counterfeiting laws and restraint on the part of the Treasury (as limited as that may be...).

Re:time for a change

[inviolet]

Inflationmore generally, any increase in the supply of any good leading to its devaluationis not damage. Everyone has a right to their dollars, but, as with any good, no one has a right to receive any specific price for those dollars in the marketplace.

The problem is that people, with the strong encouragement of governments, insist on treating as a stable store of value objects which have essentially no direct use valued in proportional to the price paid for them, not even as raw material, and which thus only command a nonzero price due to the artificial scarcity granted them via enforcement of anti-counterfeiting laws and restraint on the part of the Treasury (as limited as that may be...).

That's backwards. Inflation is a desirable practice precisely because it discourages people from treating their dollars as a stable store of value. If we did not inflate the money supply in order to keep up with the increase in our total social wealth, then dollars would deflate, and consequently people would horde them as a profitable 'investment'. Whereas in the presence of inflation, individuals must seek out real investments.

Meanwhile, counterfeiting is wrong because it is the use of inflation for personal private gain.

Re:time for a change

[Anonymous Coward]

Then the same damage would happen when the treasury prints tons of non asset backed currency? The damage our own leadership has done is far worse than any counterfeiting that ever was.

Re:time for a change

[roman_mir]

There is NO DIFFERENCE whether it is the Fed, who inflates the value of money or some Joe Schmoe in his basement.

None whatsoever except this: Fed prints money and gives it to preferred corporations, who in turn get the free money and inflate economic bubbles, gamble with the money, create derivatives and generally do bad things (tm) and they use these free money to buy the politicians who will never stop the Fed.

If it is just Joe Schmoe printing the money, well :) Schmoe gets the first byte, money still gets inflated, but at least he does not use these money to buy T-Bills at a higher return rate than what the Fed is giving out the cash at.

It is insane that money supply is government controlled, it is the essence of corruption in the entire political system.

Now, if money was real, they wouldn't be able to print it, that's why they got off the gold standard in the first place - can't print gold.

In Hong-Kong the money is issued by private companies, there is competition between different currencies and the government cannot be quite AS corrupt as governments of countries that have the monopoly on money supply.

Re:time for a change

[inviolet]

Now, if money was real, they wouldn't be able to print it, that's why they got off the gold standard in the first place - can't print gold.

Google "Don't crucify me on a cross of gold" to find out the real story on why everybody abandoned the gold standard.

In a nutshell: the gold (or silver or whatever) standard only works if the supply of gold keeps pace with the growth of total social wealth. If it doesn't, then money deflates, and deflation is a perverse incentive (it causes people to sit on their cash as an 'investment'). Low inflation is best, but that means that we'd have to dig gold faster then we grow everything else.

Digging that much gold was possible in the olden days, when the economy grew at a snail's pace and the amount of gold in circulation was not already collossal. But nowadays... can you imagine how much gold you would have to find, in order to increase the total world supply of gold by 3% per year?

Re:time for a change

[omnichad]

Just don't use your laser printer. Your serial number is printed in encoded yellow dots on every page: http://www.pcworld.com/article/118664/government_uses_color_laser_printer_technology_to_track_documents.html

Re:time for a change

[omnichad]

Wouldn't that just equal the original dollar amount of what was counterfeited and put into circulation?

Re:time for a change

[bberens]

Do you believe that the total global social wealth has an exponential growth rate of 3% annually and will continue to do so until the end of time?

Re:time for a change

[ari_j]

N/p. Just trying to save people some time looking since I started out really confused and worried for a minute about what federal reserve rider was hiding in the depths of H.R. 1206!

Re:time for a change

[proxima]

There is NO DIFFERENCE whether it is the Fed, who inflates the value of money or some Joe Schmoe in his basement.

Except that the Fed pays its profits back to the U.S. Treasury. So provided you like any of the services the federal government provides, the Fed's actions help to pay for them. A counterfeiter only benefits himself/herself.

Re:time for a change

[roman_mir]

What profits? Where are these mythical, mystical profits? Who is paying them back? The free money, it's FREE money, do you not see that there are no profits in giving away free 0% interest money?

It's insane, they print free money, give it to the banks and banks buy from the Gov't long term money at about 4% - T-Bills. What are the profits are you talking about, it's a negative effect all around.

Re:time for a change

[roman_mir]

Gold standard does not require you to increase supplies infinitely to cover inflation, it only requires that you hold the gold to cover your obligations. So if the supply is not increasing, but the demand is, all it means that your current supply has increased in total value.

However, and more importantly, inflation in itself is a concept that is created by the money printing press. Printing money does not equal economic growth, it only equals more cash in hands, but if the purchase power is falling (due to the same inflation) then what is the argument?

The prices for food seem stable in the US and the world due to Richard Nixon's intervention, who basically introduced policy of price fixing, but this too will pass, it can't last.

AFAIC the food related health problems of today (obesity, cholesterol, blood pressure, heart problems, diabetes, hypertension) are the payment for the cheap mass produced food, this is NOT free. The food has to become cheaper so that it seems that the prices stay stable, however in reality the food is getting cheaper by using cheaper ingredients and processes, that end up destroying the health of people and of the land. This is NOT free.

There is no free lunch, there is no such thing as price fixing without paying for it somehow anyway.

There is no such thing as government creating wealth, thus government has no business in economy and printing money.

Gold is the true money, so are some other metals. You can't forge them (well, it's easy to discover), they are what they are and the real prices of real things stay constant in terms of gold while the purchase power of money is constantly going down.

So I am in the camp of sound money, of government being removed from controlling economy, money supply, from government being removed, because in my opinion it is causing immeasurable destruction. AFAIC the government issuing free money and being corrupt is the cause of the economic collapse.

I WELCOME the collapse if it means collapse of this current system.

Re:time for a change

[JesseMcDonald]

Inflation is a desirable practice precisely because it discourages people from treating their dollars as a stable store of value.

Desirable to who? Certainly not those currently holding dollars, who would prefer that their currency increase in value. If someone else would prefer less valuable dollars, and has the capacity to achieve this by creating more, fine—as I said, inflation is not damage; I have no problem with increases in the supply of fiat currency. Those who wish to avoid the effects should choose a more stable store of value.

Obviously this means I am opposed to forcing anyone to use fiat currency, as was done by President Roosevelt under Executive Order 6102 and the Gold Reserve Act of 1934, in which the federal government confiscated privately-owned gold coin, bullion, and certificates and made ownership of and trade in gold illegal until the Act was repealed by President Ford after 1974.

However, should public monetary policy really be motivated by a desire to enrich some (mainly borrowers) entirely at the expense of others (potential lenders)? If so, why?

P.S. In a deflationary economy, "hoarding" currency is a real investment, in the same way that "hoarding" collectibles which one expects to increase in value is an investment. It increases net wealth through saving—present production financing future, not present, consumption—which is the only means of doing so aside from unpredictable technological windfalls. The fear surrounding currency deflation is irrational.

Meanwhile, counterfeiting is wrong because it is the use of inflation for personal private gain.

And other increases in the supply of goods leading to their devaluation—such as production in general—aren't "for personal private gain"? If I manufacture a bolt (for example) then I inflate the supply of bolts, leading to a small but real decrease in the value of (at least) all compatible bolts held by others. Manufacture of this bolt is motivated by profit: my own personal, private gain. Is this wrong? If so, why? If not, why does your answer change after substituting "twenty-dollar bill" for "bolt"?

If counterfeiting is wrong because it inflates the supply of currency, then production in general is also wrong, as it inflates the supply of the goods produced. There is absolutely no difference.

Re:time for a change

[proxima]

It's insane, they print free money, give it to the banks and banks buy from the Gov't long term money at about 4% - T-Bills. What are the profits are you talking about, it's a negative effect all around.

Borrowing from the Fed is 0.75%, while 4 week Treasury bills are 0.15% (1 year are 0.4%).

The Fed manipulates interbank interest rates (the Fed Funds Rate) by buying Treasury securities itself. It owns a lot of them, actually. So when the Treasury (that is, the U.S. taxpayer) has to pay interest on those Treasury securities, that money ends up right back at the Treasury.

But the basic premise is yes, the Fed creates money. But who effectively "gets" that money is not banks but the U.S. taxpayer (because at least most of the time direct borrowing from the Fed is quite low, and the Fed mostly buys and sells U.S. Treasuries).

Re:time for a change

[proxima]

Oh, and here are the profits.

Re:time for a change

[roman_mir]

But 10-30 year T-Bills are around 4-5%, and because the money that the Fed gives out to the banks is at near 0% (and you are right, the discount rate was increased by a quarter of a percentage point about a month ago) it just makes sense to take all of that cash and then buy those long term bonds, hoarding them.

The next bubble is in T-Bills, that's a certainty. However T-Bills is equivalent to cash, it's just a bit longer term cash than dollars.

Also the Fed does not create value, it only prints cash and T-bills, it creates inflation, not value. All of the manipulations by the Fed can only make the bad situation worse, people should understand that US dollar, while rallying for the past three months (it seems on the back of Euro) is eventually going to collapse because it is after all just dead paper with no backing and no trade surplus and a huge debt. Get out of USD if you are holding them in the bank.

Re:time for a change

[roman_mir]

this just makes me laugh. Sure, waste a trillion on bailouts (you know, more are coming), waste trillions on wars that are pure profit for corporations but also are pure debt to the US citizens and declare a profit with the banks, who just got a bailout, without which they just would have collapsed.

It's the same as banks declaring they have enormous earnings and are giving out billions in bonuses, when in reality it is not earnings, it's on the backs of US citizens now, it's theft.

US government pretends it 'earned' money, the banks pretend they 'earned' money and US government pretends that the economy is going up because GDP is going up - a 'jobless recovery', what a gyp.

There will be more bailouts coming once one of the 30 'essential' financial institutions collapses and takes down every other bank with it due to leverage and under the table derivatives, and the governments are going to collapse the currencies of the state because they are free to print them and they will do so spiraling into government created hyper-inflation. This has happened only at least a dozen times in the past 100 years, it's coming on a larger scale now.

Re:time for a change

[proxima]

this just makes me laugh. Sure, waste a trillion on bailouts (you know, more are coming), waste trillions on wars that are pure profit for corporations but also are pure debt to the US citizens and declare a profit with the banks, who just got a bailout, without which they just would have collapsed.

The banks are paying back the "bailout money" left and right, with interest. Even GM has paid back quite a bit on its loans. "Of the $245 billion invested in U.S. banks, over $169 billion has been paid back, including $13.7 billion in dividends, interest and other income, along with $4 billion in warrant proceeds as of April 2010."

Re:time for a change

[proxima]

But 10-30 year T-Bills are around 4-5%, and because the money that the Fed gives out to the banks is at near 0% (and you are right, the discount rate was increased by a quarter of a percentage point about a month ago) it just makes sense to take all of that cash and then buy those long term bonds, hoarding them.

But you can't borrow from the Fed at 0.75% for 10-30 years! The discount window short term.

Re:time for a change

[roman_mir]

yeah, something to the tune of about 5% was repaid, just in time for the bonus time, to be able to take those bonuses without any attempt from the gov't to claw any of the money back. Purely a PR move. Call me when you get your trillion back from them.

Re:time for a change

[roman_mir]

but you can take cash, buy T-Bills and resell them quickly for a profit.

Re:time for a change

[proxima]

but you can take cash, buy T-Bills and resell them quickly for a profit.

Wow, no. How can you buy t-bills for lower than what you sell them for? The buyers can just go straight to the source to buy them.

Re:time for a change

[roman_mir]

You can because you are a preferred corporations who is getting a ridiculously low interest rate on the cash that you are paying for the T-Bills. All you need to do is sell them to someone who is not getting the same interest rate for the short money - cash, and then make a percent or two in profit. Wow, what a concept.

Re:time for a change

[proxima]

You can because you are a preferred corporations who is getting a ridiculously low interest rate on the cash that you are paying for the T-Bills. All you need to do is sell them to someone who is not getting the same interest rate for the short money - cash, and then make a percent or two in profit. Wow, what a concept.

Where the money comes from is irrelevant for this point. At the end of the sale, the "preferred corporation" ends up with cash - exactly where it started before it purchases the t-bill. The point is that the price of that t-bill is the same for both the "preferred corporation" and everybody else. There's no profit if you sell the t-bill for exactly what you paid for it.

Re:time for a change

[roman_mir]

No no no, you sell them at higher prices of course, through bidding wars. The reason why you can get them in the first place is because of the free money that is given to you, and so you buy huge amounts with discounts. Discounts are the key and you get discounts by having lots of money. Free money.

Re:time for a change

[inviolet]

However, should public monetary policy really be motivated by a desire to enrich some (mainly borrowers) entirely at the expense of others (potential lenders)? If so, why?

Neither inflation nor deflation have that motivation, because interest rates on loans always take account of the inflation/deflation rate and so neither lender nor borrower is enriched. That is why everybody gets angry when the inflation/deflation deviates from whatever is normal: because the deviation makes the loan harder or easier to repay than what was planned.

P.S. In a deflationary economy, "hoarding" currency is a real investment, in the same way that "hoarding" collectibles which one expects to increase in value is an investment.

Agreed.

It increases net wealth through savingpresent production financing future, not present, consumptionwhich is the only means of doing so aside from unpredictable technological windfalls. The fear surrounding currency deflation is irrational.

Well, I think the fear surrounding deflation stems from what I said earlier: all current loans and bonds are written with ~2% inflation in mind. If they had been written in a deflationary economy, then lenders would fear inflation.

That said, I disagree with your claim that hording currency increases net wealth, because the inflation-driven alternative to hoarding is not pure consumption; rather, it is investing (including bank savings accounts, which are just fronts for stocks and bonds).

And other increases in the supply of goods leading to their devaluationsuch as production in generalaren't "for personal private gain"?

Yes it is, but it is gain accomplished by the creation of new wealth. Whereas a counterfeiter produces no wealth to offset the inflation he causes. And anyway, we are talking about devaluation of dollars, not of comparable goods; in this sense, production causes deflation, which is why fiat currency is more efficient than gold when your society's production rate varies over time.

If I manufacture a bolt (for example) then I inflate the supply of bolts, leading to a small but real decrease in the value of (at least) all compatible bolts held by others. Manufacture of this bolt is motivated by profit: my own personal, private gain. Is this wrong? If so, why? If not, why does your answer change after substituting "twenty-dollar bill" for "bolt"?

As I said above, a paper bill has no utility, whereas a bolt does. Do you not see the difference? Or have you come up with a marvelous new use for small green pieces of fabric?

Re:time for a change

[proxima]

No no no, you sell them at higher prices of course, through bidding wars. The reason why you can get them in the first place is because of the free money that is given to you, and so you buy huge amounts with discounts. Discounts are the key and you get discounts by having lots of money. Free money.

[citation needed]

Re:time for a change

[roman_mir]

it is called competitive bids, and preferred corporations get preferred treatment in every way, from getting free money to getting cheaper T-Bills. Then, of-course, you can bid on the T-Bills if you are a foreign entity through a bidding house, which would sell to you whatever it is that is for sale either by government or by private institutions. Good luck getting the real price, you'll always pay more.

Re:time for a change

[darkpixel2k]

Wouldn't that just equal the original dollar amount of what was counterfeited and put into circulation?

I wasn't talking about a monetary value. The GP said we should consider the /damage/ to each victim. Sure, there's a monetary value to that roughly equal to the amount counterfeited, but there's also the erosion of confidence in the dollar, and funding for the manpower to protect the dollar. If you get a really good lawyer, you can also get money for the emotional pain and suffering everyone felt because of the lost value of the dollar. ;)

Re:time for a change

[JesseMcDonald]

Neither inflation nor deflation have that motivation, because interest rates on loans always take account of the inflation/deflation rate and so neither lender nor borrower is enriched.

Sure, so long as the rate of change is constant, and ownership of alternatives to the fiat currency is not prohibited. In that case, of course, the inflation need have no effect at all, since you can trivially compensate for it by adjusting interest rates and buying non-inflationary assets (read: gold) rather than retaining dollars. As such, why not make things much simpler for everyone and just do away with it?

In practice, of course, just measuring even the past rate of inflation is extremely difficult—just look at how how CPI has been continually redefined over the years, such that one cannot directly compare recent CPI figures with historical ones to get an idea of the actual rate of change over time. The present rate of inflation is essentially unknowable, and you can't compensate for what you don't know. Moreover, if you're trying to match inflation to "creation of new wealth" then you're not even trying to hold the inflation rate constant; frequent transient variations are to be expected, so only long-term loans can really be adjusted to compensate based on a predicted average rate.

This is putting aside the fact that the Treasury mainly prints new money to finance federal debt, making inflation a form of hidden tax on currency.

Yes it is, but it is gain accomplished by the creation of new wealth. Whereas a counterfeiter produces no wealth to offset the inflation he causes.

Production of non-currency goods creates non-currency with no increase in currency, and thus devalues the goods produced while fulfilling the demand for said goods (creating wealth). Production of currency (counterfeiting or legal printing) creates currency with no increase in non-currency, and thus devalues the currency while fulfilling the demand for it (also creating wealth). The situations are symmetric.

As I said above, a paper bill has no utility, whereas a bolt does. Do you not see the difference? Or have you come up with a marvelous new use for small green pieces of fabric?

Utility is in the eye of the beholder (or in this case, owner). Subjectively, those "small green pieces of fabric" have utility to me so long as others are willing to accept them in exchange for other goods, which is why I accept them myself. Objectively, as with any other good, the utility (value) of currency is defined by the demand for it, and you can hardly claim that there is no demand for currency. Any other measure is subjective, and thus meaningless in this context.

Use as a medium for indirect exchange is a perfectly valid form of utility, BTW, even by utilitarian standards. Indirect exchange depends on a medium (currency), and creates wealth relative to direct exchange by allowing transactions which would otherwise not occur.

Overproduction would not create wealth, but counterfeiting is not overproduction: it only occurs because there is more demand for currency than there is supply. The problem is that those in power want to keep it this way, rather than allow supply and demand to come into balance, because fiat currency (unlike commodity currencies, e.g. gold) has a natural price approaching zero. If supply were permitted to rise to match demand people would migrate to another currency—one the politicians can't control so easily.

Re:time for a change

[inviolet]

Utility is in the eye of the beholder (or in this case, owner). Subjectively, those "small green pieces of fabric" have utility to me so long as others are willing to accept them in exchange for other goods, which is why I accept them myself. Objectively, as with any other good, the utility (value) of currency is defined by the demand for it, and you can hardly claim that there is no demand for currency. Any other measure is subjective, and thus meaningless in this context.

Bulls***! Money only has indirect utility, and it only has that because somebody is out there manufacturing bolts.

Or to put it another way: The bolt-maker doesn't need money to exist, but the money-printer needs bolts to exist. A society can survive without money; adding money serves to lower transaction costs but does not, itself, enrich anyone. If a tribe had zero wealth then it would not need money, nor would it acquire any wealth by printing it.

Use as a medium for indirect exchange is a perfectly valid form of utility, BTW, even by utilitarian standards. Indirect exchange depends on a medium (currency), and creates wealth relative to direct exchange by allowing transactions which would otherwise not occur.

That is so, but counterfeiters do not serve that purpose once a tribe has already converted to fiat currency. The addition of counterfeit money does not lower transaction costs; in fact it RAISES them, because now all traders must expend effort to validate the currency they recieve.

Overproduction would not create wealth, but counterfeiting is not overproduction: it only occurs because there is more demand for currency than there is supply.

There is NO demand for counterfeit currency, and everyone rejects it as soon as they become aware of it. You say that counterfeiters are responding to a demand for more currency, yet in today's inflationary climate (in which currency is slightly oversupplied) we see counterfeiters operating nonetheless, which means there is an error in your line of reasoning.

Re:time for a change

[JesseMcDonald]

Money only has indirect utility, and it only has that because somebody is out there manufacturing bolts.

You might as well say that the bolts only have indirect utility in that others are manufacturing things to be fastened together. In what way would a lone bolt have any direct utility, after all?

Currency is a complementary good. It requires other goods to be useful, yes, but that is no different from many other goods and does not detract from its utility.

If a tribe had zero wealth then it would not need money, nor would it acquire any wealth by printing it.

Yes, and if a tribe had nothing to assemble it would not need bolts, nor would it acquire any wealth by producing them. Currency derives its value from the need for a medium of indirect exchange, just as bolts derive their value from the need for a means of connecting things together.

The addition of counterfeit money does not lower transaction costs; in fact it RAISES them, because now all traders must expend effort to validate the currency they recieve.

The higher transaction costs are not entirely due to the counterfeiters. Validation is only required to comply with anti-counterfeiting laws, which are an artifact of fiat currency. Much of the blame goes to those who would attempt to substitute fiat currency for that which does not require any such validation.

Anyway, we were talking about the utility of currency itself, however it was produced, not the act of counterfeiting per se. Currency has utility as a medium of exchange; for this purpose it doesn't matter whether it is legal or counterfeit. A perfect counterfeit would work just as well as a bill printed by the Treasury. Ergo, your statement "a paper bill has no utility, whereas a bolt does" is false. Both have utility.

Also, I never said I subscribed to the utilitarian position myself; so far as I am concerned the present utility of a good can only be objectively measured by the demand for it; anything else is nothing more than opinion based on one's own subjective preferences.

There is NO demand for counterfeit currency, and everyone rejects it as soon as they become aware of it.

Again, only because of anti-counterfeiting laws. If use of counterfeit bills was not strictly punished, or there was no test which could reliably distinguish between legal and counterfeit bills, no one would care where the bills originated.

You say that counterfeiters are responding to a demand for more currency, yet in today's inflationary climate (in which currency is slightly oversupplied) we see counterfeiters operating nonetheless, which means there is an error in your line of reasoning.

You have a strange definition of "oversupplied". To me, "oversupplied" means that supply of a good is greater than the demand for it, such that the good no longer commands a price capable of offsetting the cost of producing it. Clearly for counterfeiting to be profitable that cannot be the case: the demand for currency is much greater than the cost of producing it.

Inflation implies that the supply of currency is increasing; it does not imply that the currency is oversupplied. In fact, due to anti-counterfeiting laws fiat currency is continually undersupplied, which is where the profitability of counterfeiting arises. There is always profit to be had in circumventing an (effective) production limit.

If fiat currency could remain practical at a market-determined price—one where supply and demand were equal—then without anti-counterfeiting laws the supply would simply rise until counterfeiting was no longer profitable, at which point it would be just as good as any other commodity currency. Unfortunately for fiat currency, its market price is deliberately designed to be nearly zero, which is impractical in any currency. Other commodities would take its place long before that point.

Re:time for a change

[inviolet]

You might as well say that the bolts only have indirect utility in that others are manufacturing things to be fastened together. In what way would a lone bolt have any direct utility, after all?

Without it, a physical machine will break. Or a broken physical machine will be irreparable.

Currency is a complementary good. It requires other goods to be useful, yes, but that is no different from many other goods and does not detract from its utility.

That's where you've lost me. I regard money as a meta-good for these reasons:

• Nobody intends to consume it; rather, they intend to trade it later for something (or part of something, if talking about bolts) valuable.
• Any constriction in its supply causes it to have positive value, at which time the demand for it is infinite and ubiquitous.
• At no marginal cost, a money-issuer can print money in any denomination, which means that his product causes inflation yet is not governed by it; he can print $100, then $1000, then $10000 bills and so on, which means he is immune to the normal downward pressure on the price of his good. There is no check on his production until all currency collapses. (Bank-issued currency didn't have this problem thanks to the reserve requirement.)

For these reasons, money deserves special treatment. That doesn't automatically imply that we need a government monopoly; I am just answering your claim that money is just like other goods.

Yes, and if a tribe had nothing to assemble it would not need bolts, nor would it acquire any wealth by producing them. Currency derives its value from the need for a medium of indirect exchange, just as bolts derive their value from the need for a means of connecting things together.

Unfair to transplant my bolt example out of context and then knock it down. A tribe doesn't necessarily need bolts, but it needs goods before it needs a metagood that can lower transaction costs etc. It needs water, wheat, guns, and so forth.

No member of the tribe could want, or be enriched by, currency unless other people were already holding goods of some kind that they would trade for it.

The higher transaction costs are not entirely due to the counterfeiters. Validation is only required to comply with anti-counterfeiting laws, which are an artifact of fiat currency.

Not true. If anyone could legally produce currency, and the market then settled on certain flavors as generally acceptable, we would have to constantly check whether the buyer's currency was a) one of that month's desirable flavors, and b) not a clever copy of one of the desirable flavors.

Much of the blame goes to those who would attempt to substitute fiat currency for that which does not require any such validation.

Like what? Tying currency to any tangible good is fraught with problems. This is the conversation that was had about the gold standard, but it applies to whatever object is backing the currency...

The biggest problem is the inflation/deflation lurches that occur when the supply of or demand for the backer good changes. Gold had the smallest lurches because its supply is now nearly static (practically all gold dug in all of history is still in circulation).

The second problem is an effect of solving the first problem: if the backer good is stable, then the supply of currency cannot change to follow the total amount of wealth in society. Once again we get inflation/deflation lurches.

I consider those problems to be worse than the cure. Lending or borrowing, which are critical for economic growth, are both perilous when inflation/deflation is not stable.

Anyway, we were talking about the utility of currency itself, however it was produced, not the act of counterfeiting per se. Currency has utility as a medium of e

Re:time for a change

[ellenbee]

"Now perhaps we can argue whether the money supply should be grown by the Fed, or by private banks, or by whoever.." the fed = a private bank

Re:time for a change

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why HR1206 and S604 are essential beginnings to end the reign of the largest counterfeiter and thief of American wealth, The Federal Reserve.

Oh lord not this again.....

Re:time for a change

[aminorex]

There's a difference? I think all U.S. currency is counterfeit.

Wot?

[Linker3000]

No RFID tag?

Tin foil wallet at the ready!

Re:Wot?

[hedwards]

Eh, doesn't really matter since nobody carries hundreds. They're large enough that most places won't take them anyways. I think it's mostly tourists and people that don't actually use cash on a regular basis that carry them around.

Re:Wot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, doesn't really matter since nobody carries hundreds.

What? I have paid with an 500 euros ($667) on an movie theater. They sure took it, but the teens besides us looked at us with a weird smile.

Just because you don't carry doesn't mean nobody does.

Re:Wot?

[Macrat]

Eh, doesn't really matter since nobody carries hundreds.

Move out of your parent's basement and get a job.

Re:Wot?

[PopeRatzo]

Eh, doesn't really matter since nobody carries hundreds. They're large enough that most places won't take them anyways.

My drug dealer takes them. He won't take change, though.

Re:Wot?

[sskinnider]

I wipe my ass with anything smaller

Re:Wot?

[flosofl]

Eh, doesn't really matter since nobody carries hundreds. They're large enough that most places won't take them anyways.

You're joking right? While not pocket change, it's also not a terribly large amount of money either. I guess it depends on location, but in my neck of the woods it's not uncommon at all. I have never come across a place that refused a hundred dollar bill (or fifties).

Re:Wot?

[X0563511]

That weird smile was more likely a knowing "guess who's gettin' mugged later" look.

Re:Wot?

[Lumpy]

Maybe you don't carry hundreds... But I do as well as most people I know.

I don't have any problem spending them. In fact I have yet to find a place that will not accept a hundred as payment. Unless I'm being a prick and buying a pack of gum and paying with it.

Re:Wot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Move out of your parent's basement and get a job.

I have more than one parent, you insensitive clod!

Re:Wot?

[electrosoccertux]

Trivia question: can you guess which bill is carried the most?

Wrong, it's actually the $100 bill. Because everyone likes to look like a pimp/hi-roller/badass.

Re:Wot?

[xaxa]

What? I have paid with an 500 euros ($667) on an movie theater.

I'm surprised they accepted it. They're risking ~€490 if it's fake, for a fake €20 the risk is much, much lower.

In the UK some places don't accept £50 notes -- they're the highest value, and also the oldest (least secure) design.

Re:Wot?

[bytethese]

So I take it you've never been to Vegas? Even the ATM's spit out $100 bills there...

Re:Wot?

[keefus_a]

I was talking to an attorney who was trying to explain to me that "dopers" love hot tubs. And said he could get me a good deal on a hot tub or a tanning bed. Anyway, he was representing the guy on an intent to sell charge for marijuana. He said, "I charged him $2500 and he paid me in cash with 20 dollar bills. You think he was guilty?"

Re:Wot?

[xaxa]

Eh, doesn't really matter since nobody carries hundreds.

Move out of your parent's basement and get a job.

Would you see $100 bills even if you had a job? Pretty much the only time I see £50 notes being spent is by foreigners. Most people are paid electronically or occasionally by cheque, even people that are paid in cash likely prefer £20 notes. ATMs only dispense £10s or £20s.

(Banknote statistics -- 62 million £50s produced last year, compared to 498 million £20s and 400 million £10s.)

Re:Wot?

[operagost]

Two dads or two moms?

Re:Wot?

[dawich]

Citation? I still see a number of people who do carry hundreds, because they've been brought up/trained themselves to believe that it makes them (wealthy|important|happy). Other people do because they're much less likely to spend it - it's harder to let go of a $100 than a $20 or smaller. Personally, I'm not one of those, so it'd be a curiosity.

Re:Wot?

[Convector]

It's usually places like parking garages and gas stations that don't want to take them. But fifties seem to be more commonly accepted these days. Even the automated pay stations at the BWI parking garage will take fifties.

Re:Wot?

[anegg]

I use $100 bills all the time when I make cash purchases for expensive items or when settling large debt obligations. Carrying enough $20s is a real pain. I don't try to buy a can of soda at a convenience store with a $100 bill, however. That would be stupid.

Re:Wot?

[bonkeydcow]

I actually find the $100 denomination to be too small. If you deal in cash, carrying around a relatively small amount of money, just a few thousand, is prohibitive. Try stuffing $3000 in your wallet.

Re:Wot?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a job and when I take money from ATM it gives 100 or 200 euros notes. If I go to bank they give 500 euros notes too. As others have noted, it's not uncommon. You're doing something wrong.

Re:Wot?

[coolsnowmen]

I have all of the above. (divorce & both remarried @ young age)

Re:Wot?

[stonewallred]

Last two cars I bought I used cash. 7k for the first one and 14k for the second. I use a credit card for business stuff and checks to pay most bills, but cash for everything else. Customers pay my employees in cash about half the time. The thing I notice most is that the poorer the neighborhood, the more likely they'll get cash. Right now, since the phones nor the radio are ringing/beeping I counted the cash in my pockets. 302 in my wallet, 3 hundreds and a 2 dollar bill, 1953.88 in my front pockets(mostly 100's but 3.88 in change lol),and there should be around 1000 in for deposit in cash that I ain't looked at yet. More folks than you think carry cash. And probably far more than you think keep significant amounts of cash handy at home.

Re:Wot?

[Anonymous Coward]

I went to a Rite-Aid near a college campus to buy $29 worth of random stuff, and they refused to take a $50 bill. It was simply their policy to never accept more than a $20 bill as payment. Morons...

Re:Wot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you want 100 euro notes? If I'm spending more than $50, I'm almost always going to use credit. $200 is the most cash I ever carry, it looks like that's about 150 euros now, so a 100 euro note would be over half what I keep in my wallet, sure to lead to an inconvenient mix of bills.

Re:Wot?

[WraithCube]

Most places I've been will accept $100 bills for even smaller payments of $10-$20. The one place I've found that won't is the DMV. Why a government office is the one place that won't accept $100 bills is beyond me.

Re:Wot?

[xaxa]

I have a job and when I take money from ATM it gives 100 or 200 euros notes.

I have a job and when I take money from an ATM it gives me about £100 in £20s. If it gave me one hypothetical £100 I'd very soon end up with change.

Maybe it's a difference in lifestyle, but £100 is enough cash for a very busy weekend and the rest of the week. Larger purchase go on a card -- if I'm buying drinks or a meal I'll probably pay by card if it's over £20.

Re:Wot?

[steelfood]

When gas is over $3 a gallon, taking $50-$100 to fill up isn't uncommon for a large SUV.

Re:Wot?

[xaxa]

In my wallet: £22.12, plus a credit and a debit card.

I'll probably use the ATM in the station tomorrow on my way to a gig, and get another £40. Between my house and the station there are about 8 ATM. There's a couple in the station where I change to the subway train, then more at my destination. If it wasn't so convenient to get more cash I can see myself carrying larger amounts.

Re:Wot?

[drsmithy]

What? I have paid with an 500 euros ($667) on an movie theater. They sure took it, but the teens besides us looked at us with a weird smile.

It's a different situation in Europe (and many other countries like Australia), probably in no small part because of their much higher costs of living (ie: you need more money to do anything). I've paid for a *slice of pizza* in Switzerland with a CHF 1000.- note and the vendor didn't even blink.

Just because you don't carry doesn't mean nobody does.

The US runs on $20 bills, much like the UK runs on 20-quid notes. Seeing anything larger is extremely unusual (or, at least, I have yet to see anything bigger than a $20 after 6 months of living in the US, and pulling ~500 pounds out of an ATM whenever I visit London has never delivered anything bigger than a 20).

Additionally, from what I've seen so far - and one of the few ways the money system here isn't utterly crazy - people in the US use debit cards *much* more than cash (I'm sure there's some historical reason for this but I've never researched it), to the point of buying single items like chewing gum or newspapers with a card swipe. Cash is relatively uncommon here to start with, and large bills even less so (contrast again to Switzerland where it's not at all uncommon to use cash for purchases in the hundreds or thousands of Francs range). Saying "nobody carries hundreds" is quite reasonable - even Bill Gates himself probably doesn't have anything bigger than a twenty in his wallet.

Re:Wot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Two dads or two moms?

Well, there's my mom, and then I've had your mom.

Re:Wot?

[Anonymous Coward]

So now imagine in Europe the 500euros bill.... got change ?!

Re:Wot?

[T-Bone-T]

I've found that low-income folks tend to carry $100s mostly because they can't get a bank account or credit card.

Re:Wot?

[Anonymous Coward]

7-11 type places usually won't take them. Gas stations usually wouldn't either, but I think that's been changing considering what can cost to fill the tank of an SUV in recent years.

A lot of stores seem to give you a hard time over a $100 bill and ask for something smaller if you need anything more than about $20 in change, which can make it hard to break a $100 bill. Often they'll only take it after calling a manager to verify it. You can use $100 bills, its just a pain to.

Re:Wot?

[dave420]

Most shops have counterfeit-detection devices at the tills, meaning they'll know there and then if the note is bad.

Re:Wot?

[billybacs]

I see $50s regularly, butas you said, many people pay with debit and credit cards, simply because (for most of the people I know, anyway) they a) hate carrying around the inevitable pocket of change and b) if they lose their wallet, they can just cancel the card rather than be out $x. Many companies now prefer direct deposit also, so oftentimes there's minimal reason to keep cash on-hand in your daily life unless you specifically want it for whatever reason. One of my PT jobs still gives paychecks (and cashes them onsite) so I use that cash for gas and food, and my jobs that use direct deposit I reserve for bills or bigger purchases. ...It's definitely easier to keep yourself disciplined by using cash rather than some debit/credit card that could have any amount of money behind it (or none). I went down the route of loving my credit card, and am paying probably three times my balance in interest because of dumb decisions. Cash is inconvenient, but provides a nice self-control for itself that most people lack.

Re:Wot?

[Kjella]

I've paid for a computer and renting a cabin with 500 euro bills at least. I had no problems paying with 1000 bath (31$) notes in Thailand, which is huge in a country where the GDP is less than 1/10th of the US - it'd be like a 350$ bill in the US. The visual protections on the euro bills - at least the easily visible ones - are much the same across the notes. If you're used to the feel of the notes, all the things that light up in UV, the metallic strip with the holograms and whatnot makes it really hard to fake. Unlike dollars which as far as I can remember (it's been a while) looked like plain green pieces of paper. Not saying it can't happen, but you have to be in a different league than just having a semi-decent printing press.

Re:Wot?

[davester666]

Wow. What are the odds that both of your parents would decide they were gay...

Re:Wot?

[raodin]

In my experience, the total number of people paying with cash is fairly small, but of those people, a fair number do use 50s and 100s. If cash is your primary method of payment, you don't really want to carry around a whole lot of 20s. Cash gets bulky pretty easily.

Re:Wot?

[coolsnowmen]

0%

Re:Wot?

[VisceralLogic]

You might be surprised. I see (and not too infrequently) people peeling of hundreds at the grocery store. And these aren't people that look super rich, either. Maybe they just don't trust banks and credit cards.

Re:Wot?

[SleazyRidr]

A few of the sandwich places near me (in Houston) have signs up that they won't accept anything larger than a 20.

I've been told that in Australia, while everyone has to accept every note, there is a limit on how much change has to be given. Something like 10x the amount of the purchase. So if you really want to buy that $2 hot dog with a $100 note, he only has to give you $20 in change.

Re:Wot?

[omnichad]

The most recent gen. of Dollars has at least: color shifting ink on the numbers, a portrait that you can see only with a backlight to the bill, and microprinting.

Re:Wot?

[omnichad]

Yeah...what part of "this note is legal tender for ALL debts, public and private" doesn't a branch of the government understand?

Re:Wot?

[pclminion]

The $100 bill is the most common unit of US currency in foreign transactions. The vast majority of $100 banknotes in the world are not held by Americans.

Re:Wot?

[sghosty]

Maybe banks and credit cards don't trust them...

Re:Wot?

[mog007]

How do you have a device that can detect counterfeits, that a human being cannot also do?

In the USA, we have these silly pens that just detect starch on the paper. The assumption being that counterfeiters would use crappy paper that has starch in it, and they will get marked as purple from the pen.

Of course, here, if a bill is suspected of being counterfeit, you have to call the police immediately, but when a bill fails the pen test, most cashiers will just give the bill back to the customer and ask for a new one.

Nobody actually checks the watermarks, or color changing inks, or the other anti-counterfeiting stuff.

Re:Wot?

[j_sp_r]

When gas is 1,50 euro a litre ($7,60 a gallon), taking $50-$100 to fill up isn't uncommon for a econobox.

Re:Wot?

[mog007]

All these anti-counterfeiting features on new designs are useless until the old bills are no longer legal tender. Because people can still just fake the old style ones, that were easy to fake.

Re:Wot?

[MoonBuggy]

A bit off topic, but how can one be unable to get a bank account? A ten second Google search shows that there are accounts in existence with no fee or minimum balance.

Re:Wot?

[Obsi]

All the ATMs I've seen in Vegas are brightly lit and have an arm on the side to make a withdrawal. Oh, and they only pay in quarters. LOTS of quarters.

Re:Wot?

[TangoMargarine]

Because the average person in the U.S. will have any idea what would make a Euro fake?

Re:Wot?

[Binary Boy]

Wow. Last time I was in Italy (2006) I had frequent trouble paying for may items without exact change - not everywhere, but enough to tell me that, at least at that time and place m,any cashiers expected exact change. For instance, I tried to get a bottle of water and an apple with a 20 and had to go to three markets before one would take my bill.

Re:Wot?

[T-Bone-T]

Having never been in that position, I don't know.

Re:Wot?

[MorderVonAllem]

Wish I had some mod points because this is exactly the problem that I perceive. Until you remove all old bills from circulation why would anyone bother counterfeiting the new bills? These new 100 dollar bills probably cost 20 dollars each to make and how knows how many millions just to design and then build the machinery to make them...

Re:Wot?

[fumblebruschi]

I have. A book store in Harvard Square (since closed) wouldn't take a hundred-dollar bill to pay for thirty dollars' worth of books. That was in the nineties sometime. Last summer I paid a twenty-dollar toll on I-90 in New York with a hundred, and the collector came out of the booth to write down my license plate number.

Re:Wot?

[jonadab]

> Eh, doesn't really matter since nobody carries hundreds.

You'd be surprised.

> They're large enough that most places won't take them anyways.

That doesn't stop people from trying constantly.

Where I work (small public library) we deal with such tiny amounts of money that we don't even like taking twenties, because it exhausts our supply of change and we have to send somebody to the bank. Anything larger than a twenty, forget it: we tell the patron to go to the bank. We don't have that kind of money in the building, sorry.

But we still get people *trying* to pay for their fifty cents worth of photo copies (or overdue fines, or whatever) with a hundred dollar bill. This happens every single day. We tell them and tell them and tell them, we're never going to have enough cash on hand to change a hundred, but it never sinks in.

I blame it on ATMs. They give out the largest bills they can for the amount you're getting, which has to be a multiple of twenty bucks. I don't think most people *go* to the bank any more (like, you know, actually go in and speak to a live person face to face), so the only time they ever have normal-sized bills (like fives for instance) is if they get them back as change when spending something larger.

Re:Wot?

[eth1]

Really? I've only ever known *one* person to ever have hundreds on a regular basis, and that was only because he didn't have a bank account and had to go straight from paycheck to cash.

Everyone I know carries minimal cash (which comes out of an ATM in $20s - I'd have to spend extra effort to get $100s) and uses a check or credit/debit card for everything over about $3. I can sometimes go 3-6 months on $100 in cash.

Re:Wot?

[tyger_purr]

A bit off topic, but how can one be unable to get a bank account? A ten second Google search shows that there are accounts in existence with no fee or minimum balance.

In my experience, almost all "no fee" accounts require direct deposit of a pay check. If you don't get a regular pay check from a single source willing to do direct deposit, it can be hard to get an account.

Re:Wot?

[Anonymous Coward]

In my experience, actually, paying with 500 EUR bills can be difficult - quite a few places explicitely don't take them, and there's some (far fewer, admittedly) that also don't take 200s.

100 and below is definitely fair game no matter where you go, though.

Re:Wot?

[NeoSkandranon]

I don't get it personally, but plenty of people carry large bills because they transact daily personal and work business with it.

Re:Wot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Undocumented folks can't provide the details the bank wants (like say, an SSN) and general low income might not be able to provide a stable address depending on their housing arrangements.

Re:Wot?

[ooshna]

Thats why when your dealing with cash for a kilo of coke you use a briefcase or duffel-bag duh.

Re:Wot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like your pinkie? Or a glass microscope slide? Or one of those five-bladed disposable razors? They're all pretty small.

Re:Wot?

[Muad'Dave]

Me saying that "Water is all you need to drink" doesn't mean that's all that you _can_ drink. That statement doesn't require them to accept currency, it just says that if they do, it's a legal means to settle the debt.

http://www.ustreas.gov/education/faq/currency/legal-tender.shtml#q1

Re:Wot?

[drsmithy]

Wow. Last time I was in Italy (2006) I had frequent trouble paying for may items without exact change - not everywhere, but enough to tell me that, at least at that time and place m,any cashiers expected exact change. For instance, I tried to get a bottle of water and an apple with a 20 and had to go to three markets before one would take my bill.

Yeah, but that's *Italy*. You're probably lucky they didn't try and barter something with you in lieu of money. :)

Re:Wot?

[Muad'Dave]

I bet the car dealer loved having to fill out an IRS form 8300 on you.

Re:Wot?

[drsmithy]

It's definitely easier to keep yourself disciplined by using cash rather than some debit/credit card that could have any amount of money behind it (or none).

Interestingly, I find the complete opposite to be true. Putting everything on the debit or credit card makes it *much* easier to see where my money is going (either by doing my own analysis, or using something like mint.com) than a weekly $200 ATM withdrawal.

Re:Wot?

[darthdavid]

In my wallet: 7(5$ + 2 1$s)$, some ID and shit, and 1 playing card (a joker). Oh yeah, high roller baby!

Re:Wot?

[thoughtsatthemoment]

You usually pay a large amount of cash in $100 bills. And people always check them, so more security features are helpful. Also if you have a briefcase of brand new bills in the old design, you might as well print the word counterfeit on it.

Re:Wot?

[billybacs]

Generally, I agree with you. But as other commenters stated, it's a matter of actually looking at your balances, which I've thankfully learned to do. I limit my cash pool to Gas and Food, so in that sense it's easier. I know I'm spending so much on gas / food each week and I'm usually left with extra cash anyway in case either or both of those increases substantially for a particular week. I guess it just comes to what level of commitment a person has to tracking purchases. Cards allow you see stuff after the fact, but you still need to fight the impulse to use the card since you know you have "extra money".

Re:Wot?

[tmarthal]

That's actually the reason that the US government will most likely never go to a physical denomination higher than the $100 bill.

If I understand correctly, all large electronic transactions (>$10k) are auto-monitored by the banks, and tracked by the government. It is a lot harder to pay someone $50 million dollars if you do it in cash due to the size of the physical dollar bills than if you do it as an electronic payment. Given that the government wants to monitor criminal activity, super large drug cartel type money movement is a lot harder with smallish $100 bills.

$3000 being prohibitive? Try to stuff $30mil into your wallet!

Re:Wot?

[AK Marc]

That's actually the reason that the US government will most likely never go to a physical denomination higher than the $100 bill.

They used higher ones until Nixon canned them in 1969. Incidentally, the retired $500 bill, if it were around today, would be worth less than the $100 allowed in 1969. To keep in line, we should bring back the $1000, because every year $100 becomes worth less and less

Re:Wot?

[HTH NE1]

Also if you have a briefcase of brand new bills in the old design, you might as well print the word counterfeit on it.

Like counterfeiters wouldn't have ways to artificially age and weather their product.

But then it would look like currency from a major crime like a casino or bank robbery or an armored car heist.

Re:Wot?

[AK Marc]

Faking $1 is a pointless exercise. All the jail time, 1/100th the rewards. And if someone passes the "old" $100 after the new ones have been out a couple years, you refuse them. The old ones aren't easy to fake, but they are easy to get to 90%. When you handle lots of bills, the fakes do get through. But when there are only a few "old" bills left, you give them more attention and the fakes will be noticed.

Re:Wot?

[AK Marc]

You have to have a SSN and a home address. I believe it's illegal to give a homeless person a bank account. The reason being that the IRS demands to know everyone with a bank account. And they do run checks on you, if you had, say, a girlfriend that cleaned out your account without you knowing and that resulted in you passing a bad check, they can and will refuse to give you an account.

And anyone working illegally won't want to get an account. The documentation required would leave a paper trail that could get them in trouble. And people that move a lot (migrants and such) would have to close and re-open accounts based on proximity enough that it's not worth even opening an account. Then there are the people that just don't trust having someone else hold all their money. That they physically could open one doesn't mean they are mentally/emotionally capable of it.

Re:Wot?

[xaxa]

In the UK the banks are required to offer a "Basic Account", which won't come with a chequebook or debit card. It has a card that can only be used in ATMs, and thus you can't possibly go overdrawn. (I think if you're under 16/18(?) and ask for a card you get the same thing.)

I don't know what documentation is required. It's pretty easy to "borrow" an address to open the account though, and almost all the banks are national, so there's no need to change. I doubt illegal workers have anything to worry about, since the NI number (for tax) isn't required for bank accounts. (It does leave a paper trail if you are caught, but you're unlikely to be caught because of the account.)

Re:Wot?

[dave420]

Really? Well, it's common for counterfeit note detectors to accurately measure the size of a note, its reflective index under UV or IR light, check for any required magnetic ink/codes, etc., all in under half a second (very popular ones in under 0.2 seconds). I doubt any human can do that. The machines that are commonly used also tally up the number of notes it has checked, and their denomination, for book-keeping to aid the merchant. The machines can be updated, too, so if a new note becomes legal tender, the devices can instantly tell whether it's real or not. No more cashiers scratching their heads at a new design, or calling the cops when you want to buy a pack of cigarettes with a "funny-looking bill" you got from a bank ATM that morning.

Re:Wot?

[HarvardAce]

A bit off topic, but how can one be unable to get a bank account? A ten second Google search shows that there are accounts in existence with no fee or minimum balance.

Well, there's two things at play -- people might either not want a bank account, or they can't get one. All bank accounts probably require some sort of proof of identity, which someone like an illegal alien or fugitive might not have access to (or wouldn't want to give). And, despite FDIC insurance, there are people who don't trust banks with their money.

Re:Wot?

[ncc74656]

When gas is over $3 a gallon, taking $50-$100 to fill up isn't uncommon for a large SUV.

Who pays cash for gas? Plastic (whether backed by your checking account or a credit line) saves you two trips into the store: one to pay before pumping, the other to get your change when you're done.

Re:Wot?

[ncc74656]

So I take it you've never been to Vegas? Even the ATM's spit out $100 bills there...

I live in Vegas, and the ATMs here are pretty much the same as everywhere else: they spit out $20s. The only exception I can recall was one ATM in front of the student union at UNLV that issued $5s.

Re:Wot?

[ncc74656]

I bet the car dealer loved having to fill out an IRS form 8300 on you.

It could've been a private sale. Someone who puts his old car up on Craigslist isn't running the sort of business described on that page you linked as needing to fill one out.

Re:Wot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, doesn't really matter since nobody carries hundreds. They're large enough that most places won't take them anyways.

You're joking right? While not pocket change, it's also not a terribly large amount of money either. I guess it depends on location, but in my neck of the woods it's not uncommon at all. I have never come across a place that refused a hundred dollar bill (or fifties).

Ever ordered pizza? Drivers aren't obligated to take any bills over $20 b/c they aren't supposed to carry more than $20 in change at any one point (helps deter robberies).

I'm sure it's much the same anywhere else.

Re:Wot?

[RockDoctor]

Because the average person in the U.S. will have any idea what would make a Euro fake?

why would they? They're hardly likely to come across one. A Canadian with US dollars, or a USian with Canadian dollars, or a Brit with Kroner or a Noggin with Euros ; these are much more reasonable tests.

Actually, I'd be quite interested to see (and examine, carefully) a kosher 500 note. Just so I know what to look for. Sterling £100s and £50s I'm already sufficiently familiar with. In fact, it won't be that long before £50s start turning up in (some) ATMs ; it's been well over a decade since they were swapped to £20s and £10s.

Still out of date

[anarche]

pffft. put out a press release when you join the 20th century...

http://www.questacon.edu.au/indepth/clever/plastic_banknotes.html

Re:Still out of date

[Joce640k]

Ummm....the plastic ones would never be allowed in the USA - they don't absorb cocaine properly.

Re:Still out of date

[batkiwi]

I think the issue is that we (Australia) won't license the patent and actually print the money for all the countries that use it. Do you reckon the US would go for THAT?

Re:Still out of date

[The MAZZTer]

We already have plastic money. We call them credit cards.

Re:Still out of date

[MoonBuggy]

From the linked article:

Blank polymer substrate is also sold to a number of countries that print bank notes using their own facilities.

Admittedly, though, I don't see the Americans being particularly enthusiastic about any part of the supply chain being out of their hands.

Personally I care less about what they're made of and more about the sizes and colours. I know dollars are tinted now, but they're still basically green, and all the same size. Not a major issue, I know, but it's just that little bit less convenient when you're thumbing through your wallet.

Re:Still out of date

[Sycraft-fu]

Well that's nice. I presume CSIRO has given the US royalty free use of the patent. What's that? They haven't? Ahh well there you go then.

Please understand that for various reasons, not the least of which being the vast amount of US currency in use, the distance to Australia, and so on it would not at all work for the US to contract to Australia to print their notes.

Also understand that a radical change in the materials of the notes could lead to problems in compatibility with various automated systems that deal with them. So while the longer life of the notes is nice, it isn't the only concern.

Re:Still out of date

[L4t3r4lu5]

Surely that means less of it will end up in the note, and more in the catwalk model's nasal cavity?

Value added!

Re:Still out of date

[anarche]

Also understand that a radical change in the materials of the notes could lead to problems in compatibility with various automated systems that deal with them.

I think this is probably a bit more important than otherwise noted.

I don't see why CSIRO wouldn't license polymer notes, they license wireless networking...

Re:Still out of date

[physburn]

err, that was 10 years ago, the 20th century, did you miss the millennium. But if you want futuristic money, read last weeks new scientist, http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627562.700-schrodingers-cash-minting-quantum-money.html?page=1

Re:Still out of date

[Zouden]

Not true - while we do produce polymer banknotes for most of the countries that use them, we've also licensed the technology to Brazil, China and Israel for their own production. There's no reason the same couldn't be done in the US, apart from the Not Invented Here issue.

Re:Still out of date

[mitchells00]

The US Treasury Department is testing polymer bank notes, but there are concerns that the American public will reject a plastic Greenback.

Are they serious? Americans wouldn't like more durable plastic money because it's not American paper money? I've never lived in a world with paper money, and whenever I go overseas I always notice that paper money is flimsy and often torn, not to mention in the tropics it's sweaty. Plastic money is the way to go.

Re:Still out of date

[Kenshin]

Canada's joining you Aussies with the plastic currency soon. Next year, I think, our money is making that transition. (Let's hope they don't make the design worse. Tories + Committees generally = Bad Design.)

Re:Still out of date

[yobjob]

We still haven't perfected the technology. Or more to the point, perfected the technology for $5 notes. The rest are fine, the 5's fall apart all the time. Baffling.

Re:Still out of date

[yobjob]

Yep - and we still have a banking system.

Re:Still out of date

[blue l0g1c]

Interesting, but there's something unsettling about all that plastic.

If you didn't know, US dollars are made from a cotton/linen blend. Much more durable than paper and easier on the environment than plastic.

Re:Still out of date

[DrXym]

Are they serious? Americans wouldn't like more durable plastic money because it's not American paper money? I've never lived in a world with paper money, and whenever I go overseas I always notice that paper money is flimsy and often torn, not to mention in the tropics it's sweaty. Plastic money is the way to go.

The US "rejects" changes to its currency because it never pushes changes properly. The dollar coin being one example. How do you get people to switch from dollar bills to dollar coins? By not printing dollar bills any more and taking them out of circulation when they go through clearing. Eventually everyone switches whether they want to or not. As a further incentive you pass legislation that makes old currency non-legal tender after some reasonable point, after which people must exchange it at a central bank.

If the situation with dollars sounds pathetic, that's because it is. European countries are far more adept at switching notes than the US, so adept in fact that most of Europe switched entirely from one entire currency to another in the space of a few months. Not only does it mean currency can more readily introduce anti counterfeiting measures but can also include more features for blind & sight impaired people too such as coloured notes & size differences in coinage.

Re:Still out of date

[Joce640k]

The feds aren't thinking of the catwalk models when they slip bags of cocaine into the money-counting machines, they're thinking of the jury's reaction.

Re:Still out of date

[Anonymous Coward]

This is because there's no political will to do anything at all in the U.S. Even the watered-down half-assed health care reform that took fourteen goddamn months has people whining that it's destroying the country or some such bullshit.

Moving to dollar coins? You'd have people immolating themselves in the streets. It's not an important enough issue when there's this much inertia about changing anything ever.

Re:Still out of date

[dotancohen]

pffft. put out a press release when you join the 20th century...

http://www.questacon.edu.au/indepth/clever/plastic_banknotes.html

I suppose that you missed this quote from the very article that you link to:
"The US Treasury Department is testing polymer bank notes, but there are concerns that the American public will reject a plastic Greenback."

Re:Still out of date

[dotancohen]

Actually, the paper and other materials do come from Australia, but the notes are printed locally in some cases.

Re:Still out of date

[FriendlyPrimate]

Plastic money came to my mind right away too. But if you think about it, paper money could itself be considered a security feature, since it gives the money a limited lifespan. Plastic money lasts a very long time, and therefore cannot be replaced with better bills as easily.

Re:Still out of date

[OnlyJedi]

Personally I care less about what they're made of and more about the sizes and colours. I know dollars are tinted now, but they're still basically green, and all the same size. Not a major issue, I know, but it's just that little bit less convenient when you're thumbing through your wallet.

Or, if you happen to be blind, more than "a little less convenient". US paper currency has been ruled to be discriminatory to the blind. Unfortunately, this redesign does not address the issue.

The biggest reason I've seen for not changing the size or adding raised/textured numbers that can be felt by hand, is that it would screw up vending machines. But there are a couple of points of counterargument. For one, can you say that older vending machines will be able to read this new redesigned bill either? It seems so totally different that it's unlikely.

But even if it can, there's the second point; most of the many, many vending machines in the US accept $1 and $5 bills, selling $1.50 cans of coke or $1 bags of candy. Yes, there are a small number of machines selling higher priced items such as electronics, but these are much less common (and have higher profits as well). So, the solution is to start changing size from the top down, keeping the $1 bill the same. Only the relatively rare, high-profit machines need to be changed over to accept the new bills. The machines found in every school, shopping center, and transportation hub selling Coke and M&Ms don't have to be touched.

Re:Still out of date

[Abcd1234]

Personally I care less about what they're made of and more about the sizes and colours. I know dollars are tinted now, but they're still basically green, and all the same size. Not a major issue, I know...

Tell that to someone who's visually impaired... then again, fuck the blind, right? :)

Re:Still out of date

[xaxa]

Interesting, but there's something unsettling about all that plastic.

If you didn't know, US dollars are made from a cotton/linen blend. Much more durable than paper and easier on the environment than plastic.

Coins last for decades. Every other "rich" country uses coins for something so low in value as US$1. The UK has a £2 coin (US$3), the Eurozone has €2 (US$2.6), Australia has a AU$2 (US$1.9).

There are four British coins (£2, £1, 50p, 20p) of higher value than the highest value US coin in normal circulation (US$0.25).

Re:Still out of date

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

sigh. i miss the 10 reais plastic bill.

wish the central bank had kept the agreement with australia to keep them flowing. maybe even extend it to other denominations.

Re:Still out of date

[operagost]

The US government is so adept at nudging us into the desired behavior with taxes and mandates, that they forgot that it's perfectly constitutional for them to decide what will be legal tender currency.

Re:Still out of date

[anegg]

So you propose that the United States should move more quickly on major changes to health, financial, and economic systems? That when making $1T changes 14 months of debate is too long?

Me, I'm happy that big changes take some debate. I'm not always happy with the outcome, but I welcome the debate.

Re:Still out of date

[Anonymous Coward]

Not going to happen. You can't tip strippers with dollar coins.

Re:Still out of date

[Cimexus]

Yeah I don't buy the 'but think of the machines!' argument against changing the design of the US currency. Dozens upon dozens of other developed countries have changed currencies in the last 20 years. Australia switched from paper 100/50/20/10/5/2/1 dollar bills to polymer 100/50/20/10/5 dollar bills and $1 and $2 coins during the 90s. I don't remember any problems occurring with vending machines etc. A bunch of countries now license the Australian technology to print their own polymer money ... and they too had no major problems. If you do it over a couple of years and just let banks take the 'old' bills out of circulation when they get them, the transition is easy.

Not to mention half of Europe which not only changed currency designs, but the actual currency (to the Euro) virtually overnight.

Every time I visit the US I remember anew how much the USD bills suck. All the same size. All the same colour. Which means if you have a wad of them in your wallet you have to flick through them looking at the numbers to find the denomination you need. Not to mention the general flimsiness of how they feel (and it also seems they are extremely dirty!). Your coins are fine ... but the bills drive foreigners who aren't used to them insane.

Actually the whole situation is analogous to the common arguments against America switching to metric that you hear - "but we'll have to re-engineer machines, we'll have to re-make road signs, we'll have to change our computer systems". That's all true ... but other countries didn't seem to have any major disruptions when they did this (including other developed, industralised countries). So I'm pretty sure the US could manage it, with its huge economic resources and can-do attitude towards things (in general!).

Re:Still out of date

[TapeCutter]

No need to make them non-legal tender, just take them out of circulation. Aussie one and two dollar notes are still legal tender, I've got a couple of them in an old photo album but I haven't seen anyone use them in the last 20yrs.

Re:Still out of date

[Kral_Blbec]

Will people please stop comparing the USA to Europe? There are many reasons that we are not/should not/and don't want to be like them.
On the currency side, think about the difference in the volume of bills between the US dollar and the EU. We have a lot more bills and we have a lot more ATMs/vending machines. It isn't feasible to change that quickly. Furthermore, they have not switched entirely in the space of a few months. Its taken years to phase over to the Euro (which many over there don't want) and it still isn't universally accepted (at least it wasn't last time I visited. I would be very surprised if that had changed).

Re:Still out of date

[anegg]

Anyone who thinks that US dollar coins are a great idea can certainly aid in the effort to spread them around. The next time you want some $$, go into the bank (instead of hitting the ATM) and ask for dollar coins. Then spend them wherever you go. I know of what I speak; I've been getting about $125 worth of dollar coins from the bank every month for about 3 years. I use them everywhere. I give them to my kids for allowances and school lunch/milk money. I use them at toll plazas. I use them at convenience stores.

Use a little personal initiative and support the things that you believe in, and you will find that all kinds of change (no pun intended) are possible.

Re:Still out of date

[Kral_Blbec]

Market prices in Britain are also much higher. I for one don't particularly care to ever use coins regardless of denomination simply because they are an annoyance to carry around. They are heavy, space intensive, and loud.

Re:Still out of date

[bar-agent]

You can't tip strippers with dollar coins.

Yeah, that pesky thong is in the way of the coin slot.

Re:Still out of date

[TapeCutter]

"Plastic money lasts a very long time, and therefore cannot be replaced with better bills as easily."

It's simple to replace money, you just get the banks to pull it out of circulation when it comes across the counter. Most countries can do this in a matter of months with zero inconvienience to the public. A few years ago Ireland pulled their notes because of a large bank robbery (swapping 50 million pounds would be noticable).

Re:Still out of date

[bar-agent]

Plastic money is the way to go.

Paper money has its advantages. You can write on it and stamp on it and ink-bomb it. I don't think you can do those things with plastic money. You can wad and fold paper money to a greater degree than plastic money, which allows for smaller wallets and greater convenience. Paper money also feels warmer, smells nicer when new, and has a better texture. Plus, it doesn't get slick with sweat.

Re:Still out of date

[MoonBuggy]

"We have a lot more bills and we have a lot more ATMs/vending machines." [Citation Needed]

Re:Still out of date

[bar-agent]

I know dollars are tinted now, but they're still basically green, and all the same size. Not a major issue, I know, but it's just that little bit less convenient when you're thumbing through your wallet.

I like that they are all the same size. All the edges line up nice and neat. When you are riffling through your cash, the numbers are all in the same location and you don't have to worry about overlooking a bill.

I have traveled in places that use variably-sized bills. It drove me nuts that they wouldn't line up.

Re:Still out of date

[Painted]

How odd, I was just thinking how boring and drab the new American currency looks- still a 19th century design, with a blue "oops, the rubber stamp missed" mark on the front and a giant bling-bling 100 in GOLD on the back. I'll take any* Canadian design in the last 30 years over the American stuff. I think in general, it's mostly been quite pretty, and definitely a whole lot easier to quickly zip through your bills and have a good idea at how much you have in your wallet- no peering in to inspect each bill's corner to read the denomination- a flash of red and you know* you have a $50.

Not to mention that Canada has been far, far more aggressive in updating our currency than the US- we redesigned our currency in 1954, 1969, 1986-92, 2001-04, and will be doing so again starting in 2011 (not to mention the Loonie and Toonie). Many of the security "innovations" being incorporated in the US in this redesign were incorporated in the 1986 series in Canada...

Re:Still out of date

[rjch]

Well that's nice. I presume CSIRO has given the US royalty free use of the patent. What's that? They haven't? Ahh well there you go then.

Why should we? It was an Australian invention and Australians should benefit from it. This particular issue hasn't been of concern to countries such as China, Brazil or Mexico (to name just a few)

Please understand that for various reasons, not the least of which being the vast amount of US currency in use, the distance to Australia, and so on it would not at all work for the US to contract to Australia to print their notes.

It works fine for Romania and Kuwait, both of whom are a similar distance from Australia. Besides, as has already been pointed out, countries such as Brazil print their own.

Also understand that a radical change in the materials of the notes could lead to problems in compatibility with various automated systems that deal with them. So while the longer life of the notes is nice, it isn't the only concern.

So do you think that (a) we didn't go through that in Australia or (b) that we don't have vending machines in Australia? You haven't mentioned a single real reason why it couldn't be done.

Frankly, the only real reason it hasn't (and probably won't) happen is that the US have to do everything their own way, even if they end up with an inferior technology as a result.

Re:Still out of date

[rjch]

You can't tip strippers with dollar coins.

Yeah, that pesky thong is in the way of the coin slot.

Oh god, if only I had some mod points! Classic!

Re:Still out of date

[Arkham]

I have to honestly ask, why do you like dollar coins? The last thing I want is a bunch of heavy coins in my pockets scratching my cell phone.

I hate change in all forms, and dollar coins are no exception. It's ridiculous that pennies are still being minted -- they're probably worth more in raw materials than the value on the coin.

Re:Still out of date

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you been paying attention to the news in the last year? Protesters will go nuts and cry "socialism" whenever anyone proposes the slightest change to American life, especially when it makes us more like those damn furriners.

I'd love to see the metric system in wider use, different-sized full-color bills, $1 and $2 coins...but we're a "bottom-up" society and a lot of the grassroots are against any change, period.

Re:Still out of date

[ColdWetDog]

Paper money also feels warmer, smells nicer when new, and has a better texture. Plus, it doesn't get slick with sweat.

You're supposed to spend the money. Not sleep with it.

Sheesh.

Re:Still out of date

[ColdWetDog]

They are heavy, space intensive, and loud.

Sounds like, um, sounds like....

Oh never mind.

Re:Still out of date

[OldeTimeGeek]

Here's one that has to do with vending machines:

Changing money size would mean that every machine that vends any type of bus/train/transit ticket here would have to be swapped out. These machines are usually owned by the municipalities in which the machines reside. Most, if not all, local governments are operating in deficit. So is the Federal Government. The new machines would cost money, so unless the vendor was either uncharacteristically benevolent or fiscally stupid enough to give them away, no local government would consider taking the cost of replacement on. And Federally-mandated programs with no source of reimbursement are really popular right now...

Not to mention cash registers - I'm sure all of the mom-and-pop stores would be happy to toss their old single-size machines in favor of something new...

Re:Still out of date

[xaxa]

Furthermore, they have not switched entirely in the space of a few months. Its taken years to phase over to the Euro

It took considerable planning, but the actual public change (notes and coins) was done quite quickly, within a couple of months. Shopkeepers don't want to keep two sets of coins/notes (there isn't space in the drawer), so they'd typically put all the old currency to one side and only give change in Euros. The old currency went to the bank, the banks only gave out Euros.

You needn't take the whole of Europe as an example, anyway. The UK switched from pounds, shillings and pence in the 1970s, and in the 1980s removed the £1 note and introduced the £1 coin. In the 1990s the sizes of the 5p, 10p and 50p were reduced (they'd been made the same size to their old money equivalents to make the transition easier), and the 20p introduced. In 1998 the £2 coin was introduced, and is now in widespread use.

(which many over there don't want)

That's completely political, and has little (if anything) to do with the shapes, colours, sizes and denominations of the currency. If Texas was using a different currency to the rest of the States you might have a point.

and it still isn't universally accepted (at least it wasn't last time I visited. I would be very surprised if that had changed).

It's very difficult to find somewhere in the Eurozone that doesn't accept Euros. Any shopkeeper doing that would be insane. It's been that way since the change. I think there's a little village in France that uses Francs to encourage people to spend money in the community, but there's a village in England somewhere doing the same thing.

(It's obviously extremely easy to find people in the UK, Sweden, Denmark etc that won't accept Euros.)

Re:Still out of date

[Wrath0fb0b]

The US "rejects" changes to its currency because it never pushes changes properly. The dollar coin being one example. How do you get people to switch from dollar bills to dollar coins? By not printing dollar bills any more and taking them out of circulation when they go through clearing. Eventually everyone switches whether they want to or not.

Did it occur to you that if Americans (collectively) don't want to change it then perhaps the government ought not to do so? The government is not an entity of its own creation -- it was created to carry out the will of the people* and has no existence outside that will. When you say "the government should force people to switch whether they want to or not" is roughly equivalent to saying "the people should force the people to switch whether they want to or not" -- it's grammatically ridiculous.

Now, I'm not going to claim that representative democracy is everywhere and always perfect (far from it) but I cannot possibly fathom why the American People do not have the right to have a currency the way they want it. This isn't an issue of popular tyranny, it's a simple preference for dollar bills over dollar coins that was plainly evidenced by everyone's actions. No one liked the dollar coins, they were awkward and not particularly useful and so the Treasury was right not to insist on a forcible change.

Ultimately, I can't understand the argument that it is legitimate to force people to do something for their own good. If it was really for their own good, you would be able to convince them by reason and, if you can't, perhaps you ought to defer to their judgment because they probably know better what's good for them than you do. That's not to say you have to accept their judgment as correct, you are welcome to persist in the belief they are simply wrong but it does mean you ought to respect their contrary opinion.

* Nominally, obviously there are some implementation issues plus the the usual restrictions about inalienable rights and tyranny of the majority. The fact that rep. democracy is not perfect does not impact the basic legitimacy of popular sovereignty.

Re:Still out of date

[OldeTimeGeek]

Precisely. Nothing like walking down the street in any major city with coins jingling in your pocket. Talk about panhandler magnets...

Re:Still out of date

[fermion]

Before we go willy nilly into this new technology here are some questions.

How much more expensive are these notes? While notes in australia might only last six months, in the US the replacement rate is more like 2 years. If plastic notes are, for example, 3X more expensive to produce, then that is kind of false economy.

How much harder are they to counterfeit? Right now a counterfeit bill might only stay in circulation a few years. With plastic money, it might be harder to counterfeit, but if it stays in circulation, the damage in increased through repeated circulation.

Re:Still out of date

[Myopic]

Dude, plastic money? Seriously? Get real! If you want non-flimsy and non-sweaty, then pure titanium money is the only realistic solution.

It's hard to put in a wallet, though.

Re:Still out of date

[dave420]

Yeah! The way you can instantly see how much money you have without having to riffle through is so fucking annoying! Also those bloody blind bastards complaining that they can't use paper bills without relying on the cashier to provide correct change. Sons of bitches.

Re:Still out of date

[Anonymous Coward]

most vending machines around here don't even take $1 coins that have been out for a decade or more and you expect them to take weird sized money anytime soon? GLWT.

Re:Still out of date

[dave420]

The 20p piece was introduced in 1982. Other than that, perfecto.

Re:Still out of date

[dave420]

If you can't figure out how to make your coins not jingle in your pocket, or not scratch your cellphone, you have bigger issues to worry about than being mobbed by pan-handlers.

Re:Still out of date

[bzipitidoo]

No kidding. America used to be the home of the brave, adventurous, and scrappy and smart, who weren't afraid to fight and take risks, albeit carefully calculated. And we often scored big. The nation was founded on a then radical, risky type of government. Europe doubted the viability from the beginning. Didn't think we could run a government and a nation, or inspire and organize a military, or foster any cultural accomplishments. Some hoped we'd fail, as our success would make their philosophy of government look bad. Winning the Revolution could be dismissed as a one time fluke, a flash in the pan. The Barbary Wars began to change that impression, but we had setbacks. The British burning of the US White House in 1812, apart from being hugely embarrassing, was fodder for all the monarchists who constantly looked for signs that the US was failing, was about to fall apart. The Civil War brought back much of that, though by then the Europeans were cautious enough not to bet too openly against the US, and so did not recognize or officially treat with the Confederacy. Lincoln's 2nd Inaugural Address was held up to these European skeptics as evidence that the US could foster culture, and produce great written works. The Transcontinental Railroad, in addition to its immense practical value, was undertaken to silence the doubters by showing that the nation could still undertake gigantic civil engineering efforts even as it was wrapping up the Civil War. Lincoln was a Republican. Can you imagine what today's Republicans might say about a bill to finance a Transcontinental Railroad while the nation was in the midst of Civil War?

And now? We still haven't fully adopted the Metric system! So, no surprise that we're also clinging to our coinage and paper bills. Guess something like states quarters is about as radical a change as the public will tolerate. We've become too comfortable, and don't want to have to think any more than we must. Even though not using the Metric system everywhere costs us greatly, with one of the most prominent examples being the Mars Climate Orbiter, you'll have opposition because it will cost money to update all the mile markers on the highways, and gallon milk jugs, and Fahrenheit thermometers.

Much of the news is just so much noise over people who didn't want to think about their risks and goals, and who foolishly bought into all this marketing that "you can have it all!" and "you deserve more!" It's become Unamerican not to spend more money, except when it comes to changes like modifying coin and bill operated vending machines. People with saving accounts are too often accused, a little too seriously, of harming the economy. Admittedly, the big spenders were enabled by banks who definitely should have known better, and who now hold the country's finance system hostage because they're "too big to fail". We can't let them die as they so richly deserve, because it's true, it really would paralyze the economy and hurt a lot of innocent people. Still, it's sickening to hear some "hard" luck story about families being foreclosed out of McMansions that they didn't need and should never have bought in the first place. I have the uncomfortable feeling that to most of the world, such sounds rather like Mrs. Lay of Enron infamy when she wailed "we've lost everything!" Or this Joseph Stack, who seems to have felt so hard done by, yet had a family, a nice house, and could afford the plane that he deliberately crashed into an IRS building. Or Killinger of WaMu complaining that it was unfair that WaMu wasn't saved along with many other bad financial institutions.

Re:Still out of date

[Anonymous Coward]

People don't like carrying coins as they are right now. Dollar coins are larger than heavier than even the quarter (but not quite large enough to be able to quickly differenciate from by touch). Nobody wants to carry those around in their pockets, especially when you can get up to 4 of them back as change. Unless the person giving change is being an ass, in which case, you can get 19 of them, and then what...

Not to mention that numerous vending machines (the only place where they'd actually be better than paper bills) still don't support them. Sure, the major ones in high-traffic areas do, but the ones tucked away in the corner of a rest area where you'd most likely want to get a bag of chips and a bottle of water mostly likely don't.

Re:Still out of date

[Volante3192]

The American public is filled with retards.

They'd rather keep a coin with a face value of 1c that costs 1.7c to mint rather than just ditch the thing and...SHOCK...cut spending.

They'd rather keep the dollar bill, who's lifespan is measured in months, than switch to coins who's lifespan is measured in decades.

Seriously. check your $1s. Find ONE in circulation with a series of 1999 or lower and I'll be utterly surprised. (I only have 2, both 2006.)

Then check your coins. Sure, most will likely be 200x, but i've got a 1993 quarter and a 1972 dime that looks exactly like a 2002 dime i have as far as wear is concerned.

Yeah, sure, this won't actually have a major impact on gov't spending, but it's something that's obvious and easy and should Just. Be. Done.

Re:Still out of date

[gawaino]

Not likely politically. Crane Co. in Massachussetts produces the paper for US currency. Although now that Ted Kennedy is gone, change might be possible.

Re:Still out of date

[MoonBuggy]

I pretty much agree, small denomination notes are easier to carry than coins.

I do, however, always seem to end up with an excessive bundle of them that won't fit in my wallet while in the states - paying for a $4 item with a ten seems (in my experience) likely to get six singles in change. Paying $5 with a twenty often gets a ten and five ones. It's by no means a major issue, just something I noticed happening that I thought was a little odd. Not enough fives in circulation, perhaps?

Re:Still out of date

[xaxa]

Make them roughly circular and 1-3cm in diameter and I'll have no problem putting them in my wallet with the rest of the coins :-)

That would be cool. But possibly too expensive, except for commemorative coins.

Re:Still out of date

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should we? It was an Australian invention and Australians should benefit from it. This particular issue hasn't been of concern to countries such as China, Brazil or Mexico (to name just a few)

And, yet, somehow Australians still find a way to whine and cry about America retaining control of the DNS roots of the Internet that America invented and invested in...

Re:Still out of date

[raodin]

Meanwhile, the stores you spend them at send them all back to the bank. Ooops.

Re:Still out of date

[sjames]

And if they heat and stretch the plastic before they print on it, you can use a hair dryer to show kids what inflation is :-)

Re:Still out of date

[DrXym]

On the currency side, think about the difference in the volume of bills between the US dollar and the EU. We have a lot more bills and we have a lot more ATMs/vending machines.

Vending machines are a not a compelling reason. Most modern vending machines are programmable. If coin == some weight and coin == some dimensions then amount = 1.0. I actually arrived in long term parking of Dublin Airport on 1am 1st January 2002 (the first day of the switchover) and I had to pay by credit card because my old coins no longer worked.

Besides, I do not expect vending providers actually like fitting their machines with bill readers given the extra expense and how apt they are to frustrate & annoy customers by rejecting / ripping / swallowing bills.

It isn't feasible to change that quickly.

So change over the course of a couple of years. Britain manages to introduce notes in a new series every so often. They coexist with the old ones for a few years and then they takeover. The reason being that banks withold the old notes and burn them so the old currency naturally dwindles until they cease to be legal tender. After that time if you hold old notes you must exchange them.

Furthermore, they have not switched entirely in the space of a few months. Its taken years to phase over to the Euro (which many over there don't want) and it still isn't universally accepted (at least it wasn't last time I visited. I would be very surprised if that had changed).

The Euro switchover was planned for years but the execution from pre-Euro currency was extremely rapid. The changeover schedule was up to two months starting from 1st January 2002 after which the old currency was no longer legal tender. Some countries did it in a single day such as Germany. So people changed their loose change in the bank and went on paying for stuff in a new currency. It didn't take years and whether people want it or not is irrelevant - the changeover was efficiently handled and universal.

It demonstrates that if the legislation and political will is strong you can switch an entire currency over multiple countries representing hundreds of millions of people in 8 weeks. Or if the legislation is watered down and pathetic you can't even introduce a single lousy coin despite multiple attempts over the course of decades.

Re:Still out of date

[Anonymous Coward]

I do, however, always seem to end up with an excessive bundle of them that won't fit in my wallet while in the states - paying for a $4 item with a ten seems (in my experience) likely to get six singles in change. Paying $5 with a twenty often gets a ten and five ones. It's by no means a major issue, just something I noticed happening that I thought was a little odd. Not enough fives in circulation, perhaps?

Generally that only happens at places where you are expected to tip. Which seems to be everywhere now. I really enjoy traveling overseas and not having to pay a hidden "optional" fee.

Re:Still out of date

[DerekLyons]

The US "rejects" changes to its currency because it never pushes changes properly. The dollar coin being one example. How do you get people to switch from dollar bills to dollar coins? By not printing dollar bills any more and taking them out of circulation when they go through clearing. Eventually everyone switches whether they want to or not.

And in the meantime, there is enormous amounts of inconvenience for virtually everyone in the country while bill changers, vending machines, cash trays, coin counters, etc..., etc..., are upgraded. It's nowhere near as simple as just replacing the printing/distribution of one with the minting/distribution of another.
 

If the situation with dollars sounds pathetic, that's because it is. European countries are far more adept at switching notes than the US, so adept in fact that most of Europe switched entirely from one entire currency to another in the space of a few months.

No, what's pathetic (other than your kneejerk anti-American/America must copy Europe copypasta), is your misunderstanding of both situations.
 
Europe didn't switch to an entirely new currency 'in a matter of a few months'. The process started with the Maastricht Treaty, which took months of negotiation, was signed in 1992 and ratified in 1993. It took from 1994 to 1998 to complete various steps to prepare for the creation of the Euro. In 1999, the virtual Euro came into being and the various nations that would adopt the Euro began the process of minting the physical Euro coins and banknote. It wasn't until 2002, that the coins and banknotes were distributed and the actual switchover of currency was completed.
 
Or, to put it simply, it took years for Europe to introduce and switch over to an entirely new currency - not months.

Re:Still out of date

[jameskojiro]

Peace Out Coinslot Dryness!

Re:Still out of date

[Kenshin]

Oh, I never said I didn't like our currency. (Well, the current $10 is kinda badly thought out.) I'm just worried about its design falling into a conservative-fueled, cliched jingoistic trap.

Re:Still out of date

[Fear the Clam]

It's not difficult to tell quarters from dollar coins. Quarters have ridges along the edge.

Re:Still out of date

[matty619]

Modern bill acceptors require a simple ROM replacement to read new currency designs. If you change the size, you have to redesign the hardware.

Re:Still out of date

[Hes Nikke]

The US Congress is so adept at nudging us into the desired behavior with taxes and mandates, that they forgot that it's perfectly constitutional for them to decide what will be legal tender currency, as long as it is gold and silver.

FTFY

Re:Still out of date

[Xoltri]

Yes you can. Come to Canada sometime.

Re:Still out of date

[iamthelaw]

The claim that having tons of different currencies in circulation so that you can introduce anti-counterfeiting measures actually makes it harder to counterfeit is kind of absurd on the face of it.

Don't get me wrong; I would love to have plastic money. Personally, I just wish they'd change the face design back to the "classic" version (conceding a large-print denomination somewhere), and make all the anti-counterfeiting stuff more subtle (e.g. plastic money, clear windows, watermarks, strips, heat-sensitive ink, etc.) rather than make the bills look like play money.

But we're still in a position where a merchant has to accept the oldest, easiest to counterfeit money. The Europeans made the switch once just by saying the old money is worthless after a certain date; but let's not go crazy -- that's happened exactly once, and for a very practical reason that people could get behind. Counterfeiting is not a crime that directly affects individuals until it's detected.

Re:Still out of date

[DrXym]

And in the meantime, there is enormous amounts of inconvenience for virtually everyone in the country while bill changers, vending machines, cash trays, coin counters, etc..., etc..., are upgraded. It's nowhere near as simple as just replacing the printing/distribution of one with the minting/distribution of another.

Hardly an enormous inconvenience if it's planned to a sensible schedule. The fact that European businesses and banks managed to swap currency in a two month handover show how utterly absurd such objections are. Phasing out could easily be done in under 5 years and probably less with proper legislation.

Europe didn't switch to an entirely new currency 'in a matter of a few months'.

Don't be silly. It's quite obvious what I meant from "European countries are far more adept at switching notes than the US, so adept in fact that most of Europe switched entirely from one entire currency to another in the space of a few months". I was quite clearly talking about the physical switchover.

Re:Still out of date

[NeoSkandranon]

My experience in retail was that 5s always seem to run low.

The last two places I worked a register, the boss rarely had many 10s in the drawer, so dropping (for example) 2 20's on a 22 dollar puchase would get 3 fives back.  That purchaser would likely be annoyed to get 15 ones so that's where the fives go first

Re:Still out of date

[DerekLyons]

And in the meantime, there is enormous amounts of inconvenience for virtually everyone in the country while bill changers, vending machines, cash trays, coin counters, etc..., etc..., are upgraded. It's nowhere near as simple as just replacing the printing/distribution of one with the minting/distribution of another.

Hardly an enormous inconvenience if it's planned to a sensible schedule.

Right. Making a schedule removes all inconvenience. Making a schedule removes the need to modify hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of automated cash handling systems. Making a schedule removes the need to modify hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of cash tray and drawers. Etc... Etc...
 
You're an idiot. The inconvenience lies in the doing, not the schedule.
 

The fact that European businesses and banks managed to swap currency in a two month handover show how utterly absurd such objections are.

No, it shows that inconvenience was worth it - to them, for their goals. That doesn't make the same true of the US.
 
As far as the Europeans being more 'adept', get back to me when they've done it more than once. You can't draw a curve through a single data point.

Re:Still out of date

[Hurricane78]

You mean imaginary money!
Is it based on something physical with value? No. So it’s just a number, with an imaginary value attached to it. If you stop believing in it, it’s worth zero. And that is a big problem, because what happens when people stop believing in imaginary value, can be seen, every time the stock market crashes.

Also, actual money is not made out of paper. That would fall apart very quickly. It’s made out of denim fibers. In other words: dissolved jeans.
And actual money is either made out of a valuable substance (gold/silver coins, etc), or is a official debt obligation note that can be exchanged for that valuable substance in any (state) bank.

That is why you always buy gold when everything goes down, and sell it when everything goes up.
And this is the exact reason, Glenn Beck and his friends now try to make you buy gold. Because things are now at the bottom, going up.
They tell you it’s a good investment, because it rose so dramatically. But it only rose because everything went downwards. And now it’s the gold that is going down again. So you get to keep the gold while it falls in value.
In essence it’s the same thing as giving away your work for 1/7th of what you thought you got for it.

Right now, when it really goes up, it’s not dumb, to transform whatever you have, into cash.
(Of course when it goes down even further, that’s a really bad idea.)

Re:Still out of date

[GumphMaster]

I presume CSIRO has given the US royalty free use of the patent. What's that? They haven't? Ahh well there you go then.

Why the hell should the US, home of gross over-extension of "intellectual property" "rights", expect this to be free (if indeed any patent right still exists)?

The distance between printer and consumer is not particularly relevant unless you have an insular view that considers that outside the contiguous 48 should be labelled "Here Be Dragons". Here's a tip, convert your own presses.

On the compatibility issue. Much effort was put into making the notes, plastic though they are, behave well in existing machinery with just minor tweaks to pick up tensioning and the like. I don't recall any mass replacement of ATMs coinciding with release of the polymer notes (cira 1990) and, if memory serves, the same machine might offer paper $20s and polymer $10.

On the volume issue... Note Printing Australia has printed notes for small nations that cannot justify maintaining a local treasury printer. I'm sure that they, amongst others, will be looking at tendering to print 1000 million 10Rs notes for the Reserve bank of India. http://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/Tenders/PDFs/PNPQB130410.pdf

Re:Still out of date

[Neoprofin]

Yeah I don't buy the 'but think of the machines!' argument against changing the design of the US currency.

Why do you think it's been such a struggle to bring in the dollar coins? Could it be that most vending machines don't take them, thus making them terribly inconvenient for one of their major uses? Do you think people are honestly just that against change just to be pointlessly spiteful?

Not to mention half of Europe which not only changed currency designs, but the actual currency (to the Euro) virtually overnight.

Try 10 years for inception through a period of value pegging (which didn't work terribly well) through introduction and into standardization with over two months spent with multiple currencies per country.

I wont even get into the rest of it because I don't feed trolls, but I can let you pass on the first as you're obviously not an American who would have personal knowledge of just how much Americans despise $1 coins, and the second I have to imagine you just never bothered to learn.

Re:Still out of date

[Neoprofin]

I have trouble explaining this to people from other countries. The only time I use cash is at bars, and only if it's too busy or I wont be there long enough to start a tab. The US will give credit cards to practically anyone, and practically every place of business takes them. I understand that there are some people who will never give up cash just like they never give up writing checks, but most of the nation has clearly voiced that we're not a cash based society anymore when vending machines started taking credit for $1 purchases.

I don't know why they bother to redo the currency every couple of years when the economy moves further and further away from cash every day.

Re:Still out of date

[xaxa]

Why do you think it's been such a struggle to bring in the dollar coins? Could it be that most vending machines don't take them, thus making them terribly inconvenient for one of their major uses?

On the contrary, a coin reader is much, much cheaper and more reliable than a bill reader. Coin readers can be made to accept new coins, normally.

Try 10 years for inception through a period of value pegging (which didn't work terribly well) through introduction and into standardization with over two months spent with multiple currencies per country.

I didn't see anyone suggesting you change currency, just coins. History lesson: in 1999 the old Eurozone currencies no longer existed independently -- bank accounts etc became denominated in Euros. The changing of the coins was done in 2002, and although officially two months were allowed for the transition in reality almost everything was done with Euro coins very quickly -- it's inconvenient to have both, so people spent the "old money", and shops stuck it in the banks. See Wikipedia, for instance ATMs almost all gave only Euro notes very quickly, and "The unexpected tendency of consumers to spend their legacy currency, rather than exchange it at banks, led to temporary shortages of euro small change, with some consumers being given change in legacy currency." (I'm not sure why this was unexpected. Exactly the same happened when the UK changed from pounds, shillings and pence to pounds and "new pence" in the 1970s.)

Re:Still out of date

[xaxa]

If you're used to coins it's very easy to keep the number you carry low, especially if the denominations are sensible (1n, 2n, 5n, where n is a multiple of 10) to allow small numbers of coins to be given in change. It's rare for me to have more than £5 in coins in my wallet.

In the US you end up with loads of coins because there aren't enough denominations. 72c in change = 25, 25, 10, 10, 1, 1. 72p in change = 50, 20, 2. For most numbers from 1-100, it's less coins with the 1-2-5 system.

(Proof: here's a list of the difference between the number of coins needed in the US and UK to make every amount from 1 to 99. Only four values (25, 26, 35, 36) require an extra coin in the UK, everything else is the same or fewer.
[(1,0),(2,1),(3,1),(4,2),(5,0),(6,0),(7,1),(8,1),(9,2),(10,0),(11,0),(12,1),(13,1),(14,2),(15,0),(16,0),(17,1),(18,1),(19,2),(20,1),(21,1),(22,2),(23,2),(24,3),(25,-1),(26,-1),(27,0),(28,0),(29,1),(30,0),(31,0),(32,1),(33,1),(34,2),(35,-1),(36,-1),(37,0),(38,0),(39,1),(40,1),(41,1),(42,2),(43,2),(44,3),(45,0),(46,0),(47,1),(48,1),(49,2),(50,1),(51,1),(52,2),(53,2),(54,3),(55,1),(56,1),(57,2),(58,2),(59,3),(60,1),(61,1),(62,2),(63,2),(64,3),(65,1),(66,1),(67,2),(68,2),(69,3),(70,2),(71,2),(72,3),(73,3),(74,4),(75,0),(76,0),(77,1),(78,1),(79,2),(80,1),(81,1),(82,2),(83,2),(84,3),(85,0),(86,0),(87,1),(88,1),(89,2),(90,2),(91,2),(92,3),(93,3),(94,4),(95,1),(96,1),(97,2),(98,2),(99,3)]
)

Re:Still out of date

[anegg]

I like the dollar coins for a few reasons. W.R.T. cell phones and ipods, it doesn't matter whether they are dollar coins or other change, they will scratch devices in your pocket. So I don't put those devices in the same pocket as any change I might have. As for why I like dollar coins:

First, the parking lot where I often park takes credit cards or coins. Since I don't like to pay for $4 parking with a credit card, I use coins. Dollar coins are just four quick drops, instead of 16 quarters.

Second, they are great for kids because they have mass and sink into their pockets. Dollar bills get crumpled up and can fall out when other things are removed. My son lost a $5 that way last week.

Third, for small amounts of change its useful to have one or two around. I don't carry $10 in dollar coins, but I do usually have one or two in my pocket. It is harder to lose a dollar coin than a dollar bill. I can put them in the coin holder in my car.

Four, they are useful for teaching kids about the presidents of the US, as the current run of dollar coins are going through all the presidents starting with G. Washington.

Re:Still out of date

[rjch]

Here's one that has to do with vending machines:

Changing money size would mean that every machine that vends any type of bus/train/transit ticket here would have to be swapped out.

Again, I'll ask if you think that we didn't go through this when we changed currency - of course we did!

Not to mention cash registers - I'm sure all of the mom-and-pop stores would be happy to toss their old single-size machines in favor of something new...

Not necessarily. This would only be the case if any note were larger than the existing notes.

Re:Still out of date

[bar-agent]

Yeah! The way you can instantly see how much money you have without having to riffle through is so fucking annoying!

This only works is if you carefully segregate your bills by denomination and keep them sorted by size. That overhead is unnecessary with same-size bills. It is faster to pay and be paid when you don't have to sort.

But, yeah, blind people have a problem. I hope the Treasury comes up with a good compromise. A patterned edge? Intaglio? Braille? Cut-outs?

Re:Still out of date

[bar-agent]

You're supposed to spend the money. Not sleep with it.

Hey, if I want to put all my money in a big pile and make it my bed, that's my own business.

Re:Still out of date

[Anonymous Coward]

If she is a stripper - why is she wearing anything at all???

Re:Still out of date

[drsmithy]

Yeah I don't buy the 'but think of the machines!' argument against changing the design of the US currency. Dozens upon dozens of other developed countries have changed currencies in the last 20 years. Australia switched from paper 100/50/20/10/5/2/1 dollar bills to polymer 100/50/20/10/5 dollar bills and $1 and $2 coins during the 90s. I don't remember any problems occurring with vending machines etc.

Vending machines that take notes are relatively uncommon in Australia, however, because - like most European countries - we have coins that are actually worth enough to be useful. Coins in the US may nearly as well not exist, their denominations are so small.

Re:Still out of date

[mjwx]

Well that's nice. I presume CSIRO has given the US royalty free use of the patent. What's that? They haven't? Ahh well there you go then.

Sure, as soon as the US gives Australia some royalty free use of their patents. You cant have it both ways sunshine, especially since you back-doored the DMCA into Australian law.

the distance to Australia,

WTF does this have to do with it. You'll damn well make them locally you lazy gits. Just like Israel, Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand and Vietnam.

All sarcasm aside, CSIRO understands that countries want to control the production of their own currency so they license the technology to do so, sometimes even the expertise to get it started as was the case with Vietnam's conversion to polymer banknotes.

Also understand that a radical change in the materials of the notes could lead to problems in compatibility with various automated systems that deal with them.

I'm yet to hear of this happening, the conversion from paper to polymer in Australia presented no significant issues. This isn't some half asred implementation here, someone has already solved these problems for you, as far back as 1992 and Australia uses the same crappy diebold ATM's as most of the world.

So while the longer life of the notes is nice, it isn't the only concern.

It's not just the life that's nice, its the durability (suddenly I'm not worried if $100 goes through the wash) and the security.

US bank notes are scrutinised everywhere, in most countries bank notes before 1996 are automatically rejected whilst MYR, SGD and AUD aren't even looked at twice.

Re:Still out of date

[mjwx]

I don't see why CSIRO wouldn't license polymer notes,

They already do.

CSIRO license almost everything they develop.

Re:Still out of date

[drsmithy]

Coins last for decades. Every other "rich" country uses coins for something so low in value as US$1. The UK has a £2 coin (US$3), the Eurozone has 2 (US$2.6), Australia has a AU$2 (US$1.9).

Much longer than that. The oldest coin I saw while I was living in Switzerland was minted in 1904, and apparently there are still coins from the late 1800s in circulation.

The Swiss also have a CHF 5.- (about US$4.50), and those suckers can build up - I found over CHF 50.- just in coins in my pocket on more than one occasion while I was living there.

Re:Still out of date

[mjwx]

How much more expensive are these notes?

On par, if not slightly cheaper then trying to increase the security the cotton-linen blend that the US uses. The biggest cost is in replacing printing machines, seeing as the technology has been around for a while this cost will be lower then that of Australia.

While notes in Australia might only last six months, in the US the replacement rate is more like 2 years. If plastic notes are, for example, 3X more expensive to produce, then that is kind of false economy.

I don't see how.

In the case of Vietnam, increasing security of paper notes would have cost more and not have resulted in the same security as a polymer note. The economic benefits come in less counterfeit notes which decreases insurance costs for banks and federal reserves. With the case of New Zealand, switching to Polymer bank notes cost them twice as much as paper notes but resulted in a note that lasted four times as long, over the lifetime of the note costs were essentially halved. If the US has a 2 year replacement cycle then there would be clear benefits to using polymer notes compared to the fragile cotton-linen notes (When I handled USD, compared to the polymer AUD, SGD and MYR the US notes were extremely fragile and often frayed or torn, I felt like I needed kid gloves to handle them).

Polymer notes are also recycled. After being shredded into a fine pulp by the RBA (Reserve Bank of Australia) the notes are melted down, mixed with other polymers or impurities and re-cast into other plastic items. This is more environmentally friendly then what we did with our old Paper currencies, which was burn them.

How much harder are they to counterfeit?

As I said with the case of Vietnam, these notes are significantly harder to counterfeit. The most expensive paper note protection hasn't been able to match cheaper polymer note protection.

Right now a counterfeit bill might only stay in circulation a few years. With plastic money, it might be harder to counterfeit, but if it stays in circulation, the damage in increased through repeated circulation.

This depends on how much more difficult it is to produce a fake note that can avoid detection. America's biggest problem is not counterfeit notes in the US, it's counterfeit notes outside the US where security detection is not as good. This has lead many international banks to flatly refuse to accept certain batches of notes and notes beyond a certain age (a serious inconvenience for US travellers, a lamentation I hear often when abroad from Americans). Polymer bank notes increase the cost, time and skill required to produce copies and increases the ability of banks to detect counterfeits, six out of every million AUD notes are found to be counterfeit.

Counterfeit notes are only good if they are not detected, a bank is the most likely place to detect a counterfeit and it is quite hard to prevent a note from reaching a bank. So the calculation you have is: (ability + cost required to make fake notes)=number of fake notes/banks ability to detect fake notes. If you increase the ability to detect notes you decrease circulation, if you increase the cost and skill to make fake notes you decrease introduction. Polymer notes attack both the supply and longevity of counterfeit notes. This PDF is informative, showing the ratio of production to circulation and comparing the counterfeit rates to the EUR, GBP and CAD.

Re:Still out of date

[Wayne247]

Hi. IAVMD (I'm A Vending Machine Designer.)

1. Different size doesn't screw up anything. Modern bill accceptor units realign the bill as it is fed in, center it or push it on one side, and stack them all up nicely and straight.

2. The raised/embossed parts doesn't mess with anything, and the machines don't crunch them more than your wallet already does. We have braille on all our canadian bills, and they're fine.

3. Older machines always need to be updated to new currencies. You might think the last batch of bills was similar to this batch, but it still required extensive updating on the market. It's okay, because vending operators welcome new security changes, as their machines are also the target of counterfeit bills (but not the same time of counterfeiting.)

4. The 1$ bill is a problem not for high value items, but for low value ones. Unless your machines vend exactly 1$ items, the 1$ bill gives you change headaches. Machines must continuously be replenished with rolls of coins to give back to you because you inserted a 5$ for a 1.25$ item. A 1$ coin solves this because it's automatically replenishes by customers on their purchases, and can be used as change for large bills (1.25$ purchase on 5$ bill = 3x 1$ coins, 3x 25c coins. Six coins in total, a good average for change payback.)

5. You guys have a 2$ bill that you don't use. Why? People genuinely enjoy and cherish their stack of 1$ bill. It will never change unless the government force it, and they don't. You will have your 1$ bill in twenty years even when you can't even buy a pack of gum with it. In canada, we had the 2$ bill to use when the 1$ bill was removed, so the transition was easy. And then we removed the 2$ bill as well! Still worked because the next bill was close (5$).

Re:Still out of date

[toddestan]

You don't even have to go to the bank if you're lazy, as the US Mint will ship a box of $250 of them right to your door at cost if you intend to spend them.

Linky:
http://catalog.usmint.gov/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10001&catalogId=10001&identifier=8100

Re:Still out of date

[toddestan]

I like dollar coins, as it's rather nice to be able to make a small purchase without digging around in your wallet for some $1's. Though on the other hand, most "small purchases" nowadays seem to involve a $5 so we're pretty much right back where we started.

Of course, back in the old days we used to have $1, $2.50, $5, $10, and $20 coins. The $20 coin contains almost an ounce of gold, so that would be like a $1000 coin (actually more like $1100) today.

Re:Still out of date

[Lunzo]

This troll is oldschool. Can't you get a more modern troll like Obamacare introducing state-run death panels or something?

Re:Still out of date

[Tyrion Moath]

That's weird. As an American who just visited Japan, I can tell you I thought their currency felt flimsy, especially compared to a dollar bill. It was tearing with a crease in a bill that I had folded maybe twice. Now I understand why they still use coins like mad, because their coins are awesome. Before I left I was worried I'd have a sack of change in my pocket anytime I went anywhere, and after I was there I was mad when I didn't!

That being said, they did have different lengths for their bills, which I think probably helps the blind. Got us there.

Re:Still out of date

[Anonymous Coward]

A currency backed by nothing, producing nothing and doing nothing. It's still not worth the non-paper it's not being printed on.

Re:Still out of date

[Cimexus]

I wasn't trolling. :(

My point was that various other countries have changed from linen/paper -> polymer currencies and managed to deal with the vending machine issue. So it can be done.

Similarly with the $1 coins. As I mentioned in my original post, Australia shifted from using $1 bills to $1 (and $2) coins during the 90s. We obviously also needed to re-design vending machines. Again - yes some work involved, but not an insurmountable problem. For a period of a few months during the transition you might occasionally find yourself at a vending machine with the 'wrong' currency type. Inconvenient, but it's only in the short term.

And regarding the second point ... two months using multiple currencies sounds like a pretty short window to me, and would seem to suggest the change was relatively efficient. Besides, in this case we are not talking about changing the actual currency, just the physical format that currency takes. You could leave both old and new bills in circulation for ages if you wished and gradually phase the old ones out over several years.

Basically, I'm not saying people are against it just to be spiteful. I'm saying that, yes, there is ~some~ pain and problems involved, but many other countries went through that and in the end they proved not insurmountable.

PS. And actually, I am American ... and Australian. Dual citizenship due to marriage. Spend plenty of time in both countries.

Re:Still out of date

[Another, completely]

I used to love the full-colour musical ride on the back of the 50. Shame they retired that one.

Re:Still out of date

[DrXym]

Right. Making a schedule removes all inconvenience. Making a schedule removes the need to modify hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of automated cash handling systems. Making a schedule removes the need to modify hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of cash tray and drawers. Etc... Etc... You're an idiot. The inconvenience lies in the doing, not the schedule.

Ridiculous. All change is "inconvenient", doesn't mean it isn't necessary. And properly enforcing that change sure beats the half assed dollar note / coin debacle that's being going on for decades in the US. Your rationalizations are getting more absurd by the minute.

No, it shows that inconvenience was worth it - to them, for their goals. That doesn't make the same true of the US.

No, because seemingly the US likes the inconvenience, expense and confusion of decades of printing low denomination notes AND decades of coinage wondering why no one wants to transition between the two.

As far as the Europeans being more 'adept', get back to me when they've done it more than once. You can't draw a curve through a single data point.

It's been done numerous times. e.g. The UK & Ireland switching to decimalisation being two examples and of course the constant introduction of new coins and notes throughout most of the world. The key to making a changing work is strong legislation and a clear schedule for introduction.

Re:Still out of date

[swillden]

So, the solution is to start changing size from the top down, keeping the $1 bill the same.

Makes sense, but it would end up being a little odd, because you'd have to change the size by making the larger-denomination bills smaller in physical size. As you point out, the size of the $1 bill should probably remain fixed, but the obvious (to me) approach of making the larger denominations larger in size would mean that the new bills wouldn't fit in our wallets. So, you'd have to make them smaller.

Re:Still out of date

[Neoprofin]

On the contrary, a coin reader is much, much cheaper and more reliable than a bill reader. Coin readers can be made to accept new coins, normally.

I never said they couldn't be, I said they weren't. The government does not control vending machine manufacturers but a lack of support from manufacturers certainly lead to some speed bumps for the reintroduction and acceptance of the dollar coin.

I didn't see anyone suggesting you change currency, just coins.

Actually the post I was replying to suggested how easy it was to change entire currencies overnight, the rest of your comment just reiterates what I said that it was actually a long and well thought out process.

Re:Still out of date

[Neoprofin]

You got a little crazy as the reply went on, but I know the feeling, I can get a little excited once I hit the posting groove too.

I guess what it comes down to is that Americans have no reason to change the currency, we like $1 bills, we hate coins, it's a match made in heaven and I don't see it going away any time soon. It's not that the US can't switch currencies or formats, it's that there's no reason to.

The vision impaired argument is always a good one, but frankly I'm more excited about advancements in technology like bill readers for cell phones than I've ever been about trying to tell what a bill is worth based on its size.

I don't get it...

[rodrigoandrade]

If I were a counterfeiter, I'd make only $5 and $10. Sure, it'd be less cost effective, since the cost of printing a $1 or $100 is the same, but no one would suspect my bills are fake.

Re:I don't get it...

[UnHolier than ever]

Wouldn't it be easier to make quarters? What security features are there on them?

Re:I don't get it...

[thoughtspace]

Yeah, but criminals launder LOTs of money - transport is much harder.

Re:I don't get it...

[nospam007]

The security feature is that they cost more to make than their face value.

Re:I don't get it...

[ShadowRangerRIT]

Quarters don't, but the profit margin is still fairly slim. Only nickels and pennies actually cost more to make than they are worth.

Re:I don't get it...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Probably not. In quantities large enough to be worth the risk of Hard Federal Time(tm) coins are heavy and bulky. Plus, fabricating metal objects on any substantial scale is generally more of a pain in the ass, and is rather more visible, than printing paper.

My(admittedly layman's) understanding, is that hundreds, to the degree they are counterfeited at all, are mostly the domain of Real Serious Actors(North Korea always seems to be on the list of suspects). Most domestic and/or fairly small-time operators are banging out twenties or smaller; because those are much easier to disseminate without attracting suspicion(counterfeit currency is worse than useless if you can't find a good way to spend it, or sell it to someobody who can, since merely producing or knowingly possessing is illegal; but it is only valuable if spent). Even if they are 100% authentic, most places will give you a seriously suspicious look if you show up with a brick of hundreds. No bored retail drone is even going to bother with a second glance if you pay your tab in a busy, dimly-lit bar with a reasonably plausible twenty or two.

Re:I don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

With the current US deficit this will soon be a security feature of the new $100 bill for all but US based criminals.

Re:I don't get it...

[KlaymenDK]

No bored retail drone is even going to bother with a second glance if you pay your tab in a busy, dimly-lit bar with a reasonably plausible twenty or two.

A quick Google search would have shown you that it is in fact rather common for bored retail drones to panic over two dollar bills. :-p

Re:I don't get it...

[Wdi]

Suitable paper and ink are hard to come by. You'd probably pay more than $5 for the materials on the black market.

Re:I don't get it...

[clone53421]

They get the paper by bleaching $1s.

Re:I don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, yeah!

Where is the slot in the cash drawer for the two-dollar bill?! Where do you put it? How do you make sure it's counted in the drawer, as a two, come the end of the shift by an equally bored retail manager at the end of your shift?

Re:I don't get it...

[BenEnglishAtHome]

Even if they are 100% authentic, most places will give you a seriously suspicious look if you show up with a brick of hundreds.

Until they get to know you.

I am a creature of routine. Except for the exceptions, of course, I tend to go to the same places and deal with the same people. The Chinese buffet at which I eat lunch expects me to pay my $8.40 tab with a $100 bill. The Walmart where I drop in to pay my Discover credit card expects me to pull out a $2K, bank-sleeved pile of hundreds, plus a few more that I fish out of my pocket.

Big exception: the dancers at the strip club. I love dropping $2 bills on the stage. They pick 'em up and look at 'em funny, sometimes for a long time.

I always carry $2 bills. I call 'em my "stripper-confusers".

Note: In my experience, Starbucks clerks will be nearly as perplexed nearly as often.

Re:I don't get it...

[stonewallred]

Nah, you take 5s and 10s, bleach them, then print 20s on the bleached bills. In the US the way that most places check currency is to mark it with a "magic" pen. If the mark is black it is a good bill. And since the "magic" pen just detects the fact it is genuine money, not the denomination, you can pass 20s all day at convenience stores and grocery stores.Hell, you can pass them in banks if yo mix them with real 20s in a smallish stack (too small for machine counting) They feel just like the rest and look like them unless closely inspected.

Re:I don't get it...

[stonewallred]

fucking check post anon first, then write dumbass self.

Re:I don't get it...

[u38cg]

On the other hand, it is surprising how often you can get away with handing over £3 notes :D Actually, in the UK, one Scottish banks still issues £1 notes. If you take them down into Englandshire, they are regularly mistaken for £5 notes, since they never see the ones. Profit, and it's sort of legal.

Re:I don't get it...

[Myopic]

You'll get better lap dances if you offer the stripper that stack of hundred-dollar bills.

Re:I don't get it...

[hldn]

i've had similiar happen to me a number of times. spend a $2 bill and get change for a $5.

Re:I don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Big exception: the dancers at the strip club. I love dropping $2 bills on the stage. They pick 'em up and look at 'em funny, sometimes for a long time.
>
> I always carry $2 bills. I call 'em my "stripper-confusers".
>
> Note: In my experience, Starbucks clerks will be nearly as perplexed nearly as often.

Sometimes they're the same person.

Re:I don't get it...

[SleazyRidr]

My Dad's always talked about that. Of course this is in Australia where $2 coins are common.

Think about it, you wouldn't be able to make enough to get rich, but you could easily cover all of your small purchases and have virtually no chance of getting caught.

Re:I don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

So YOU are the Anonymous Coward! Finaly we have worked out who you are!

Re:I don't get it...

[Convector]

I've gotten an extra fifty cents in change from spending a half-dollar when the cashier thought it was a dollar coin.

Re:I don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

I like to carry two dollar bills and Susan B. Anthony dollars. Pay a small charge of $4.37, for example, with two twos and a Susan B. and watch the confusion. The cashier is so busy looking at the two dollar bills that they always think the dollar coin is a quarter. It's fun to watch as the cachier waits for more change and finally realizes that it isn't coming.

Re:I don't get it...

[MoonBuggy]

OTOH plenty of English shops simply don't accept Scottish notes, on the basis that most employees couldn't tell the difference between a real one and a piece of paper with "£6.73" scrawled on it in yellow crayon.

Re:I don't get it...

[BenEnglishAtHome]

(in re strippers and Starbucks clerks) - "Sometimes they're the same person."

I wish.

My local strippers tend to be 30-year-old moms with classic curvy figures, classic-Texas big hair and even bigger classic-Texas implants. They are quite attractive for what they are...but nothing special.

My local Starbucks clerks tend to be teen-to-25 years old, lithe, tattoo'ed post-punks.

As a UFO (ugly, fat, old) man, I find the latter group to be far more exotic and, not to put too fine a point on it, "inspirational". If I could find a strip club that hired girls like that, I'd switch my patronage in a heartbeat.

Re:I don't get it...

[BenEnglishAtHome]

You'll get better lap dances if you offer the stripper that stack of hundred-dollar bills.

Totally unnecessary. I don't go to the NY Scores, just a twice-a-year (or so) visit to a local spot. The girls there vary widely in their offerings and demands, but if you choose the oldest and most worn-out of the lot, you can get pretty much everything possible for $400. Once you move beyond that dollar level (which is ridiculous for the hit-or-miss crapshoot of a strip club), you might as well exchange numbers and meet off-site. I don't do that. Strip clubs are great for an occasional bit of eye-candy fun; by contrast, full-fledged mongering is expensive and dangerous.

Re:I don't get it...

[91degrees]

Apparently £20 notes are the most commonly forged British currency. They're typically what you'll get from a cash machine as well so quite common. I believe that $20 bills are the most common in the US because they're not at all unusual.

Or in other words, the counterfeiters broadly agree with you.

Re:I don't get it...

[Tyrion Moath]

Actually, black is bad. It's a golden color if good.

http://money.howstuffworks.com/question212.htm

Re:I don't get it...

[jc79]

Marks and Spencer in St Pancras Station, London, accepts cash payment in Euros, but not Scottish pounds sterling. I can understand why they would accept Euros (St Pancras is the terminal for the Eurostar train to the continent) but if you're training your staff to recognise foreign currency, it ought to be trivial to train them to also recognise domestic currency too.

Pointless.

[jcr]

The idea behind making it hard to reproduce federal reserve notes is to keep counterfeiters from robbing us by expanding the money supply, but the Fed does exactly that on a scale that no independent counterfeiter could even imagine.

-jcr

Re:Pointless.

[Custard Horse]

I had no idea that there was a problem with counterfeiting of US bills that are all the same size, look the same use the same 'effluent aroma'.

Re:Pointless.

[FuckingNickName]

You do realise that you are welcome to trade only with currency that you consider valid, and to only trade with those who have the same opinion as you, yes?

Re:Pointless.

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't have to worry about counterfeits here in India. Pakistan puts a lot of efforts to print them and supply it in India.

Re:Pointless.

[mcgrew]

Well of course. Where do you think all the inflation in the '70s came from? How do you think they paid for the VietNam war? And guess what -- we have TWO wars to pay for now.

War makes the folks who run the military industrial complex richer, and the rest of us poorer.

Re:Pointless.

[bodan]

Actually, no. In many situations you are required by law to accept whatever is legal tender in the country you’re in.

Re:Pointless.

[zwei2stein]

No. That is illegal. You are required by law to accept goverment currency and forbidden from accepting other currency.

Re:Pointless.

[FuckingNickName]

Um, no, unless you're talking about repayment of debt. Even then, it's not a problem if you only trade with those who agree with you.

I have a pen here. I'll give it to you if you give me your house. There's no way that means I have to accept the cash value of your house.

Re:Pointless.

[larry bagina]

"This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private." -- US money.

Note the word "debts", which has a very specific meaning. To quote wikipedia, "Debt is that which is owed" -- past tense. Current or future transactions are not debt.

Re:Pointless.

[NotQuiteReal]

That's the funny thing about currency... currency that you consider valid has somewhat of a relative quality about it, since none of it has intrinsic value.

Bitch and moan about the USD all you want, and the apparent inflationary actions of "making up" an extra trillion here and there, it is holding its own against, say, the Euro, since the Eurozone has their own over-spending habits that are possibly worse.

Just remember, money != wealth.

Re:Pointless.

[bodan]

I did use the words “in many situations”, didn’t I?

But anyway, the nasty side of legal tender is that usually it’s the only thing accepted for paying taxes. That is, even if you somehow manage to do all your private transactions without money, most such transactions are subject to taxes, and you need to obtain legal tender to pay those.

(It used to be worse: I’m told the Mongols imposed “legal tender” throughout their empire via the death penalty...)

Re:Pointless.

[bodan]

Yes. Conveniently enough, though, most current & future transactions automatically cause a debt to be created: taxes.

IANAL, but I’m pretty sure that even if you trade (say) cars for houses, you’re still supposed to pay taxes on the exchange (there are some exceptions, too, I’m sure); and the government usually accepts only cash for those.

(Now that I think of it, if you refuse to pay your taxes in legal tender, the state will confiscate some of your property. But it tends to take a lot more than “what was owed”, so you’re still at a great disadvantage. You could say that’s not really forcing you to use money, in the sense that killing is not really forbidden, it just costs a lot...)

* * *

Also note that in “many situations” you’re not in the US, you insensitive clod!

Re:Pointless.

[FuckingNickName]

I did use the words “in many situations”, didn’t I?

Yes - but "many" comes down to "one", and it's not even about having to physically accept the money: you just can't otherwise enforce a debt if you've refused the debtor's offer to pay by legal tender.

But anyway, the nasty side of legal tender is that usually it’s the only thing accepted for paying taxes.

Indeed, you're not going to eliminate your tax burden, but it's your responsibility to creatively account your way to minimising the declared equivalent US currency value of your trades. People do this all the time when they exchange favours on every scale.

Re:Pointless.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless they are trades for "debts, public charges, taxes, or dues." in which case you are required to accept them.

Re:Pointless.

[operagost]

This is simply not true in the USA. You can accept any currency, or no currency.

Re:Pointless.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that actually legal in the US?

Around here "legal tender" means that you must accept it. (At least when people wish to pay their debts with you, not so for over the counter sales.)

Re:Pointless.

[91degrees]

So it's not pointless. Not for the treasury anyway. It keeps their monopoly going.

Re:Pointless.

[Anonymous Coward]

What of legal tender laws?

Re:Pointless.

[jcr]

I wish you were right, but you're not. Roosevelt fucked us over, big time.

-jcr

Re:Pointless.

[noidentity]

Pfft, the people in power can never do anything wrong. Printing lots of new money is obviously a good thing when they do it, but bad when a crook does it.

Re:Pointless.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except when you do that the S.S. sweeps in and confiscates your gold at the point of a loaded rifle...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Dollar

Samples?

[McGiraf]

Where can I get free samples of this new product?

Re:Samples?

[muckracer]

> Where can I get free samples of this new product?

www.federalreserve.gov

Not exactly free...printing costs do apply.

Re:Samples?

[Anonymous Coward]

Beta testing?

Re:Samples?

[Rude Turnip]

If you get yourself into enough financial difficulty, they're practically giving it away nowadays.

Re:Samples?

[syrinx]

The bank will have them. Just walk in and ask the teller to hand some over.

It might be loud in there, so you might want to write it on a note and pass it over.

Also, tellers like it when you add some friendly conversation while they're getting your money. Many tellers are interested in firearms; you may want to mention that you have a gun.

Re:Samples?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get test notes here. Good luck with those background checks ;-)

Re:Samples?

[Junior J. Junior III]

As soon as someone jailbreaks the DRM on it, which should be in 5... 4... 3... 2...

Re:Samples?

[TX297]

There's actually an answer to this: Become a Banknote Equipment Manufacturer

"thousands of lenses"

[Cornwallis]

Presumably to amplify the smoke and mirrors used by the Fed to make it appear the bills are actually worth anything.

Re:"thousands of lenses"

[Myopic]

They are "worth" the political might of the United States. By accepting the bills, you are betting on the future political power of the USA. Similarly, if you accept gold coins, you are betting on the future trade value of gold.

Any currency -- any at all -- is nothing more than a communal expectation of continued value. It's fine for people to think that (say) gold will retain its value better than (say) the USA, but it's hogwash to claim that one value is "real" and the other is not.

Re:"thousands of lenses"

[lawpoop]

Any currency -- any at all -- is nothing more than a communal expectation of continued value. It's fine for people to think that (say) gold will retain its value better than (say) the USA, but it's hogwash to claim that one value is "real" and the other is not.

I disagree.

Gold has practical value as a currency that are based on its physical properties, and facts about the human nervous system.

As a currency, it has some benefits:

1. It's congomerable and partable. You can lump it together and break it down easily, and it's value doesn't change, unlike paper currency or, say, jade. Two broken pieces of jade has less value than the whole one. A paper currency shredded is worthless. And I can't easily put them back together.
2. It's corrosion resistant, unlike copper or silver, which tarnish.
3. It's rare, but not too rare. Unlike paper currency, you can't just make more. But it's not so rare that it's unusable.
4. People have valued gold where ever they could get their hands on it. It's pretty, in an objective way, the way that people like gems, feathers, shells and other shiny, colorful things all over the world. It tickles the pleasure centers in the brain.

Combined with the fact that people like it for its beauty and its other physical properties, it's a good bet that gold will act as a currency, or universal commodity, until we're able to syntheisize or live on a planet where is in abundance like salt-water on Earth.

Re:"thousands of lenses"

[Myopic]

Those are all great points. I'm not exactly swayed, but I'm impressed.

Re:"thousands of lenses"

[snowwrestler]

Those are all things that make gold great for bartering. That's not the same thing as currency though.

Re:"thousands of lenses"

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many good works on money buy the Austrian School of economics. Particularly Mises and Rothbard. I recommend them highly.

The properties described above are why gold makes a good money and why it was used as money for so long.

Re:"thousands of lenses"

[Cornwallis]

Well it is obvious why you are named Myopic!

Re:"thousands of lenses"

[snowwrestler]

If gold was the best basis for money, we would still be using it as such. Sometimes historical success is just proof that better options were not yet available at the time.

The Real Counterfitters are The Fed

[pyro_peter_911]

The real counterfitters that we citizens need to be worried about is the Fed and Congress inflating the value of our money away. If you haven't had your congressman's ear recently telling them to knock it off then now is a good time to do so.

The Free Competition in Currency Act and Federal Reserve Transparency Act are good places to start. Talk to your congressman today and ask them to sober up.

Peter

Re:The Real Counterfitters are The Fed

[pyro_peter_911]

Troll? Really? Asking your congressmen to act responsibly with your money is a Troll?

Peter

Re:The Real Counterfitters are The Fed

[Anonymous Coward]

how do you actually counter-fit something? I find it's an interesting concept

Re:The Real Counterfitters are The Fed

[Convector]

Fitting your counters properly is extremely important for the look of your kitchen. Otherwise you get parts of the cabinets exposed and the sink doesn't sit right. Also, bits of food can fall down into the crevices where they're nearly impossible to get out.

Re:The Real Counterfitters are The Fed

[Rinisari]

Amen to this. Light upon them!

Re:The Real Counterfitters are The Fed

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. The real counterfeiting occurred in 1964 when silver was no longer used in quarters and dimes, and in 1971 when we went off the gold standard. Here is the proof: the value of a gallon of gasoline in 1964 was 27 cents. Today the average price of gas is $2.86. The melt value of a 90% silver quarter from 1964 is worth $3.27 in today's dollars. If we kept using 90% silver quarters today, we would be able to purchase more than gallon of gasoline with it. Our coins and paper money have become extremely devalued.

Re:The Real Counterfitters are The Fed

[JayWilmont]

Gold's price has gone from over $600 in the 80's, to less than $300 in the 90's back up to over $600 now. How again would this remove inflation & deflation? (The US dollar inflated between those two periods, so if gold is a counterweigh, then gold prices should have increased to match.)

What happens if a huge amount of gold reserves are found? Everyone's money deflates.

You do also know that we have fewer recessions than we did while in the gold standard, right?

And that there is nothing preventing you from accepting gold as payment? See e-gold.com & their payments system.

If you are going to claim that a government agency is defrauding you, then there needs to be evidence: the inflation rate in the US has been less than 5% for almost all of the last decade, and much of that time it has been less than 2%. And you do know that inflationary bubbles aren't the only cause of asset bubbles or the only cause of recession?

A random metal is no more/less intrinsically valuable than random pieces of specially printed paper or of little black pixels in the shape of numbers on my bank's website.

Re:The Real Counterfitters are The Fed

[Myopic]

Goodness gracious, I wish I could get me some inflation! I just bought a house and got a 5% rate on the mortgage. That's a great rate, and I hope that we enter into a period of inflation during which my wages will rise with the rate of inflation, and that inflation will be greater than 5% per year. It'll be the bank paying ME for my house!

Inflation is good in some ways and bad in some ways.

Re:The Real Counterfitters are The Fed

[Myopic]

It's true, your post isn't a troll, it's more like flamebait. But, those things overlap.

Re:The Real Counterfitters are The Fed

[hercubus]

how'll US pay 12.000.000.000.000+ debt without devalue?
US plan to stiff chingchong with worthless dollars -- ROR
hedge Canuck real oily property, silver, gold

Re:The Real Counterfitters are The Fed

[pyro_peter_911]

Gold's price has gone from over $600 in the 80's, to less than $300 in the 90's back up to over $600 now. How again would this remove inflation & deflation? (The US dollar inflated between those two periods, so if gold is a counterweigh, then gold prices should have increased to match.)

The Free Competition in Currency Act is not about returning to the gold standard. It is about putting some more competition into the currency market with the expected result that good currency will drive out the bad. By not allowing competing currencies people are forced to do business with dollars backed by nothing but the full faith and credit of the US. (Which, ain't what it used to be) Ideally, the Dollar would be the good currency and be made better by the competition.

What happens if a huge amount of gold reserves are found? Everyone's money deflates.

True. But what are the odds of a 5,000,000 kilo gold asteroid falling into Lake Michigan or the sudden invention of a machine that cheaply transmutes aluminum into gold compared to the Fed cranking out another few trillion of paper money?

You do also know that we have fewer recessions than we did while in the gold standard, right?

Fewer per period of time or just fewer? We haven't been off the gold standard that long and we've had a few whoppers. But, once again, the Free Competition In Currency Act isn't about returning to a gold standard.

And that there is nothing preventing you from accepting gold as payment? See e-gold.com & their payments system.

Nothing except the Secret Service

If you are going to claim that a government agency is defrauding you, then there needs to be evidence: the inflation rate in the US has been less than 5% for almost all of the last decade, and much of that time it has been less than 2%. And you do know that inflationary bubbles aren't the only cause of asset bubbles or the only cause of recession?

Less than 5% inflation is HUGE. Over your lifetime it is crippling to anyone who saves money. Small percentages compounded over decades grow to large percentages very quickly.

A random metal is no more/less intrinsically valuable than random pieces of specially printed paper or of little black pixels in the shape of numbers on my bank's website.

Never said it was. Frankly, from an investing point of view I think gold is a terrible investment, little better than hiding a stack of dollars in a shoebox. However, the dollar could be made better. Which would benefit many of us.
Peter

Re:The Real Counterfitters are The Fed

[bmajik]

A random metal is no more/less intrinsically valuable than random pieces of specially printed paper or of little black pixels in the shape of numbers on my bank's website.

Of course. But a random bit of metal is much harder to create out of thin air, and thus it is much better insulated against the problem of currency inflation.

Currency inflation is the problem. It is what makes the USD and indeed the US economy a bit of a prisoners dilemma. If you attempt to store your wealth in US dollars, you will find that over time, the value of that wealth approaches zero. This is due entirely to the inflation of the monetary base. This inflation is something which you do not control, and which legally you cannot opt-out of.

So the US economy requires that everyone who wants to merely keep their head "above water" finds places to put their USD denominated wealth such that it pays interest at at least the natural rate of inflation. But of course, putting your money into a fractional reserve bank may pay interest, but it also inflates the money supply. So you don't really win there.

Refusing to "play the game" means you lose, and "playing the game" from a weakened position [i.e. without the collusion of th government in maintaining a monopoly, or avoiding fraud prosecution, etc] means that you will also usually lose.

So due to the tremendous ease with which new dollars are created, and the legal tender laws which make it illegal for you to REFUSE to participate in this game, you and most people will continue to lose, as they are continually worked literally _to death_ to just keep their head above water, wealth-wise.

Of course, rows in some database are even easier to inflate than paper bills. And infact, much of the actual growth of the supply of dollars is just that: "electronic" dollars.

Having a specie based money and a strong discouragement towards paper instruments lets you avoid the insiduous destruction of inflation. And private actors _could_ do that now, but they'd be outside of the protections of government and society. Indeed, if they did it "too much", they'd become the prey of government agencies who don't fancy having their power and authority challenged.

There's nothing special about Gold. It's just that, for a number of very practical reasons, precious metals are a very good choice for a curency. Assaying precious metals is more uniform, than say, assaying cows. And cutting and recombining different fractions of whole cows is much messier, and considerably damages the value of your cow. Inert metals can be melted and cut and recombined and reminted essentially indefinitely.

When it becomes possible to cheaply inflate the supply of Gold, gold will become a very poor store of wealth and medium of exchange. But until then, when individuals are allowed to freely choose what they'd like to use as a store of wealth and a medium of exchange, Gold and Silver invariably are what they choose. THe reasons have little to do with any widely-held value assessment of gold, and instead have much to do with the practical utility of precious metals, for the reasons I discuss above.

Re:The Real Counterfitters are The Fed

[JayWilmont]

Currency inflation is the problem. It is what makes the USD and indeed the US economy a bit of a prisoners dilemma. If you attempt to store your wealth in US dollars, you will find that over time, the value of that wealth approaches zero. This is due entirely to the inflation of the monetary base. This inflation is something which you do not control, and which legally you cannot opt-out of.

You can certainly opt out of it: nobody is forcing you to hold US dollars. Storing my wealth in iPads would also result in the value of my wealth decreasing over time. Hold your money in Euros, or gold or houses or stocks, or cows (which multiply over time, and pay dividends in the form of fertilizer). There are also plenty of financial instruments that allow you to increase your value faster than inflation.

So the US economy requires that everyone who wants to merely keep their head "above water" finds places to put their USD denominated wealth such that it pays interest at at least the natural rate of inflation. But of course, putting your money into a fractional reserve bank may pay interest, but it also inflates the money supply. So you don't really win there.

What? Putting your money in a fractional reserve bank doesn't inflate the money supply significantly. Its not like if you decide to put your money in a bank that pays 1.5%, the inflation rate jumps from 1% will jump to 2%. You do win there, if the rate is higher, as it often is. Just as you would win if you put your money in a CD. Or an annuity. Or another financial instrument.

Refusing to "play the game" means you lose, and "playing the game" from a weakened position [i.e. without the collusion of th government in maintaining a monopoly, or avoiding fraud prosecution, etc] means that you will also usually lose.

Play what game? This is how money works in developed countries - we have had wild fluctuations between inflation and deflation in the past, and it was a very bad thing.

So due to the tremendous ease with which new dollars are created, and the legal tender laws which make it illegal for you to REFUSE to participate in this game, you and most people will continue to lose, as they are continually worked literally _to death_ to just keep their head above water, wealth-wise.

Illegal to refuse? There are plenty of places in border towns that accept Pesos, in Vedic City, Iowa they have their own currency that is accepted, e-gold.com allows you to pay with gold, in-game virtual currencies are fast on the rise, etc.

Continually worked to death? Thats a lot of flowery language without much evidence given to support it. Most people's incomes rise with inflation, so the net cost of inflation in terms of income for most people is zero. In addition, if you invest your money, rather than stuffing it in a mattress, there are safe investments that will certainly keep you ahead of inflation. Or you could buy your house outright, grow your own food, produce your own power, and barter with people for any necessities you can't provide for yourself.

Of course, rows in some database are even easier to inflate than paper bills. And infact, much of the actual growth of the supply of dollars is just that: "electronic" dollars.

Having a specie based money and a strong discouragement towards paper instruments lets you avoid the insiduous destruction of inflation. And private actors _could_ do that now, but they'd be outside of the protections of government and society. Indeed, if they did it "too much", they'd become the prey of government agencies who don't fancy having their power and authority challenged.

Private actors *do* do that now. Its just not very popular (aside from in-game currencies).

There's nothing special about Gold. It's just that, for a number of very practical reasons, precious metals are a very good choice for a curency. Ass

Re:The Real Counterfitters are The Fed

[NeoSkandranon]

I think I may be missing something from the FCCA link.  Perhaps I didn't read carefully enough but:

1) While the idea of multiple currencies is interesting on the face of it, what stops me from being forced to deal in ones I don't care to because at the whim of my employer, or a monopoly service provider?

2) What keeps gold producers (or any entity with gold reserves really) from manipulating value by controlling supply in a way that reinforces their interests?  As a parallel, suppose I transact business in oil based currency and demand drops, flooding the market and dropping the value like a stone? Or a massive new reserve could be uncovered, etc.

3) It seems like the last thing we need is more financial middlemen, and this would create a whole new market for currency-changers.

Re:The Real Counterfitters are The Fed

[JayWilmont]

If it isn't about using a gold standard, why does the article keep giving examples of people using competing currencies that are *backed by gold*?

How likely is it that the gold supply will not be stable in the future for any reason? Speculators have been able to corner the silver market - its possible for this to happen gold too.

The liberty dollar is one example of a currency pegged to the US Dollar. E-gold.com, in-game virtual currency, Vedic City, Iowa's Raam, and the Birkshire's BirkShares are all legal and have been around for years.

What is 5% huge relative to? My house is huge compared to an ant, and tiny when compared to a skyscraper. The question is, what are interest rates relative to other countries? According to this, the US is doing rather well: http://www.billshrink.com/blog/7050/the-highest-global-inflation-rates/

Re:The Real Counterfitters are The Fed

[complete loony]

The real counterfitters that we citizens need to be worried about are the banks issuing too much credit and inflating the value of our money away.

Fixed.

The empirical evidence shows that banks create credit first, then the Fed prints the money afterward.

As much as Bernanke tried to inflate us out of this financial crisis by printing money. His effort is insignificant compared to the amount of credit that is being destroyed. The biggest problem the worlds economies currently face is the deflating power of credit destruction.

Re:The Real Counterfitters are The Fed

[pyro_peter_911]

It's true, your post isn't a troll, it's more like flamebait. But, those things overlap.

touché

Peter

Re:The Real Counterfitters are The Fed

[pyro_peter_911]

If it isn't about using a gold standard, why does the article keep giving examples of people using competing currencies that are *backed by gold*?

Because the author of the article wasn't terribly imaginative.
Your bank, Walmart, MS, or Apple could issue a currency backed by stock in their company, products, or nothing at all. It would be just as valid as any of the other fiat currencies in the world today. Would you be interested in an Oklahoma State Bank Dollar, or a Wal-buck, or a real M$, or iCent? Probably not, but you wouldn't be required to. US Dollars, backed by nothing but promises that they're worth something, are a similar financial fiction that only works because we agree to pretend like they're worth something. Hell, company gift cards are damned close to being corporate currencies already. Currencies backed by ounces of gold, gallons of gasoline, cups of coffee, kilowatt/hours of electricity, M&Ms, would be possible.
There would likely be some very bad currencies created. (Stay away from Pyro_Peter's_Pesos, for example) But other currencies might be very good. Some might be better than the US Dollar and maybe our government and the Fed would work to keep the Dollar good too.

Peter

Re:The Real Counterfitters are The Fed

[randyleepublic]

Both of you have been fed the antipodes of the most sophisticated propaganda/scam ever devised. The problem is not commodity based currency vs. fiat currency as you see debated endlessly including here. The problem is the credit basis of money via the mechanism of fractional reserve banking. Fractional reserve banking has been allowed in, and has poisoned the economy of the US since the beginning. It is what causes so called business cycles, which cause more harm to individuals than all other depredations combined. Business cycles are NOT unexplainable as every "approved" economist claims. Please, I beg of you, read my sig, click the link, and study social credit. Knowledge is key!

Counterfeiting

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how the process of counterfeiting -- injecting paper money into the economy with nothing of actual value to back it up -- is exactly the same as what government does to cause inflation. The result? The criminal (er, government) holds more money, at the expense of everybody else whose dollars are now worth less.

Of course, when you're at the top of the pyramid, your actions are sacred rather than criminal.

Re:Counterfeiting

[Anonymous Coward]

Find me something with "actual value", and we'll talk.

Here's a hint: there is no such thing as something with intrinsic or "actual" value. Everything that is valued is valued because people find it so.

Just like currency.

Re:Counterfeiting

[lee1026]

Welcome to the modern world, post 1648 or so. Governments hold all kinds of power that your average citizen don't get. Try to lock up your neighbor in a jail of your own making and see how far you get.

But... but...

[codeButcher]

Are they also Green? (Or will I be inhaling toxic combustion products when I use them to light up my Cuban cigars?)

Re:But... but...

[Nidi62]

That should be the least of your concerns. I'd be more worried about what all those lenses will do when you wipe your ass with the bills.

Re:But... but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Stay out of direct sunlight

A disappearing Liberty Bell...

[HopefulIntern]

...that mimics the virtue it symbolises.

Is blue harder to copy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the idea of "greenbacks" and IMHO the standout colors are distracting and "busy".

Question: Is there something about the color blue that makes the security ribbon harder to counterfeit than if it were, for example, silver or green?

I can already see them working at it

[h00manist]

I can already envision all kinds of geeks staring at it with a microscope, dropping odd fluids on it, etc, in labs across the world. Really, I don't understand how paper money still exists.

Re:I can already see them working at it

[characterZer0]

Really, I don't understand how paper money still exists.

So you do not have to have your own credit card swiping machine and an account with a processor to sell something on craigslist.

Re:I can already see them working at it

[castironpigeon]

Really, I don't understand how paper money still exists.

Next time you're at the grocery store waiting in a line that takes longer to get through than the drive home, look at the front of the line and you'll either see somebody writing a check or counting out bills and coins.

Re:I can already see them working at it

[mcgrew]

Really, I don't understand how paper money still exists.

Since I'm a cheapass, I don't use credit cards because of fees and interest. Because I had a debit card stolen and used by someone who watched me punch the PIN number in and drained my checking account, I don't use those, either. I write a check every few days, at the bank.

Nobody can track what I buy or where I buy it. Paper money is the only way to be anonymous; I bought my Boost Mobile phone with cash and pay the $50 monthly fee with cash, nobody has any way of telling who owns it short of tapping it.

Ever try to buy pot without cash? Ever try to hire a hooker without cash? You can't even get a cab or bus ride without cash.

Re:I can already see them working at it

[sartin]

Get a no fee credit card and pay it off every month.

You can't even get a cab or bus ride without cash.

You can here (Austin, TX). Credit card to get a transit pass - at varying levels of convenience and planning ahead since they can't use a CC at bus stops or on busses. Credit card in the cab. Last time I was in Chicago I paid for my CTA pass with credit at the station at O'Hare. Never rode a cab, so not sure about them, but even NYC cabs take credit cards now.

Re:I can already see them working at it

[clone53421]

Eh? My bank will still cash a cashier’s check. Or even a personal check, if I’m daring enough to accept one and the person who wrote it has the money in their account to cover it.

Re:I can already see them working at it

[electrosoccertux]

Really, I don't understand how paper money still exists.

So you do not have to have your own credit card swiping machine and an account with a processor to sell something on craigslist.

Much of Europe is in the dark ages as well, few places take credit and of the places that do most of them tack on a 3% merchant fee.
They also tend (Italy most of all) to be fussy about splitting checks and are too bothered to do so, so they make you just give it to them in cash if you're eating out together. Gratuity is factored in so they don't care about serving you.
disclaimer: we weren't interested in spending 30 euros on meals, we wanted to spend 10 euros, so that's probably why service sucked. In contrast, there are a number of places I can go in America to eat for $10 and service is great.

Re:I can already see them working at it

[Abstrackt]

Really, I don't understand how paper money still exists.

Of all sites on the Internet, I'm surprised this is the one I see that phrase on. So many of us say a physical copy has more value than an electronic copy since you can do whatever you want with it, so why wouldn't the same apply to money?

I'm not so paranoid as to avoid having a bank account altogether, but keeping $50 in my wallet has saved my ass on several occasions where my bank froze my cards for "unusual activity" without letting me know.

Re:I can already see them working at it

[Lumpy]

I wish! A merchant account for credit card processing is horribly expensive. I would KILL to be able to accept credit cards myself for low volume sparse transactions.

Re:I can already see them working at it

[Anonymous Coward]

Because I had a debit card stolen and used by someone who watched me punch the PIN number in

Was that your Personal Identification PIN Number?

Re:I can already see them working at it

[characterZer0]

Are you capable of distinguishing between a real and fake cashier's check?

I know I'm not.

Re:I can already see them working at it

[GigaHurtsMyRobot]

People paying with checks and using a lot of coins are going to slow things down, this is obvious. You're wrong about counting bills though, it is way faster in most cases than credit card transactions. I think Visa commercials have rotted your brain.

Re:I can already see them working at it

[david duncan scott]

Actually, a lot of cabs take plastic, and although you're right about buses, the Baltimore Light Rail ticket machines accept credit cards as well.

Re:I can already see them working at it

[Abcd1234]

Nobody can track what I buy or where I buy it. Paper money is the only way to be anonymous

Paper money is also the way to be responsible. Generally speaking, it's a lot more difficult to monitor and control discretionary spending if every transaction is just the swipe of a little plastic card.

Re:I can already see them working at it

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm... nope. It's a fat baby factory arguing over what she can buy with her foodstamps.

Re:I can already see them working at it

[Anonymous Coward]

The Australians do have plastic bills, y'know...

Re:I can already see them working at it

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhhhh yeah, what else would I use with an ATM Machine. Moran!

Re:I can already see them working at it

[residieu]

There are no fees or interest associated with credit cards if you use them properly. You make charges on them throughout the month, at the end of the month you pay off the entire balance.

Re:I can already see them working at it

[operagost]

Ever try to buy pot without cash? Ever try to hire a hooker without cash?

Ever use plurium interrogationum on Slashdot? :-P

Re:I can already see them working at it

[h00manist]

Really, I don't understand how paper money still exists.

So you do not have to have your own credit card swiping machine and an account with a processor to sell something on craigslist.

I have little use for credit myself. I just don't understand how fake money hasn't grown so much that real paper money becomes impossible. Perhaps because the counterfeiters really just can't manage much volume.

Re:I can already see them working at it

[xaxa]

IME in London (I live here), if you've spent £20+ each splitting the bill isn't a problem, but it's a bit weird to try and split something less than that. It's inconvenient for the waiter (so that's the difference -- inconvenience for the waiter isn't a factor in the USA).

Re:I can already see them working at it

[xaxa]

In London you don't need cash for a bus -- you can use a pre-paid RFID card (Oyster card). You can add money to the card anonymously (cash at a machine, and wear a hat and a mask to foil the CCTV) or by card (with a machine, online, or automatically once the balance runs below £5).

Some coach companies accept credit/debit cards. You can also pay by card on many trains (tickets and food), although on most routes you're meant to buy a ticket before you get on (cash or card).

Re:I can already see them working at it

[SparkleMotion88]

Regardless of how our payment processing technology progresses, we will always need a secure and private mechanism that allows us to purchase (or possibly sell) something. I have seen people try to jump through all sorts of cryptographic hoops in order to develop such a system, but nothing is more simple and effective than simply taking something out your wallet and giving it to someone in exchange for the thing that you want to purchase.

Re:I can already see them working at it

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the typical answer of someone with a low intelligence IQ! Reetard!

Re:I can already see them working at it

[TubeSteak]

So you do not have to have your own credit card swiping machine and an account with a processor to sell something on craigslist.

FYI, you can do credit card transactions over the phone.
The swipe machine + modem just automates the process.
Call up the number on your card and ask them about it.

Re:I can already see them working at it

[memco]

But, there's an app for that!

Re:I can already see them working at it

[innocent_white_lamb]

Since I'm a cheapass, I don't use credit cards because of fees and interest.
 
Costco and American Express pay me to use their credit card. I use it to pay for everything that I possibly can (including groceries at our local Coop, stamps at the post office and my phone bill) and send AMEX a cheque once per month when I receive the bill. At the end of the year I get a coupon good for several hundred dollars worth of free merchandise at Costco.
 
I pay $100/year to Costco for my membership but get a multiple of that back in "free" merchandise. I also get a "patronage refund" every year from the Coop in cash (actually a cheque) for goods that I purchase there.
 
Since I only purchase stuff with my American Express card that I would be buying anyway and I pay it off in full every month, I get effectively free money and merchandise to the tune of, as I said, several hundred dollars every year.

Re:I can already see them working at it

[Anonymous Coward]

Because there's a Scrooge McDuck money-vault thing going on -- many people have wads of (physical) money tucked away that they don't want going out of date. Never mind that a "My First Saving Account" for eight-year olds' lawn-mowing savings gives better returns; some people don't trust banks, and others (criminals) don't or can't use them. Eventually, these people will have to find somewhere to trade in their boxes of Benjamins for new bills or for durable goods (think pirate booty: gold, jewels, and art objects), and they're not looking forward to the transition. Some of them even hold elected office.

Yes, it's our friend, the gregarious social lowest common denominator. No accounting for people, you know? Now excuse me, I need to set up the hoist to shift my copper billets down under the old root cellar. One-stop answer to runaway spending, there.

Re:I can already see them working at it

[j-beda]

At MacWorld 2010 I saw http://squareup.com/ that uses a little dongle to plug into your smartphone to convert the magnetic stripe to an audio-signal to get the card info which combines with their backend to do the processing. Their cut was something like 3% of the transaction, with no setup fees. Their target market seems to mostly be small business who could not get a better rate from the big fulfillment places, but also the craigslist junkies and personal transaction market.

I think they are in "release" only for the iPad just now.

Re:I can already see them working at it

[j-beda]

Generally speaking, it's a lot more difficult to monitor and control discretionary spending if every transaction is just the swipe of a little plastic card.

Control goes down with the plastic cards, but monitoring is a whole bunch easier since one can often download transactions details from the bank. With cash I often have no memory of what the money got spent on exactly.

Re:I can already see them working at it

[clone53421]

No, but it has the name of the person who gave it to me written on it, which I can compare to a state-issued picture ID card... which makes it a lot easier to find the guy and collect the money (to borrow the anti-spam checklist item) if it comes to that.

Re:I can already see them working at it

[drsmithy]

hey also tend (Italy most of all) to be fussy about splitting checks and are too bothered to do so, so they make you just give it to them in cash if you're eating out together.

This is a cultural thing. In fact, it's relatively unusual to split the bill American-style pretty much anywhere outside of the US. The assumption is that if a group of people are out together, they're well enough acquainted to sort the money out between themselves.

disclaimer: we weren't interested in spending 30 euros on meals, we wanted to spend 10 euros, so that's probably why service sucked. In contrast, there are a number of places I can go in America to eat for $10 and service is great.

Well, yeah, but that's just because food (along with just about everything else) is dramatically cheaper in the US. A freakin' Big Mac meal in, say, Switzerland or Frances costs nearly US$10.

There are also significant cultural differences between what classifies as "good service" in the US vs other countries.

Re:I can already see them working at it

[electrosoccertux]

well, it was obvious he didn't think much of us, we were cheap-ass Americans that couldn't afford to spend more.

All US bills still same size, color

[stomv]

There's really no excuse for this. The bills should have different color and size to help the visually impaired. There's no good reason not to. Sure, don't change the $1 due to bill readers. I suppose there are $5/$10/$20 readers, though usually at the post office (and hence easy to change from the government's perspective). But really -- why not mix up the $50 and $100 so that they're easier for those with disabilities to use. It'd at least be a step in the right direction.

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[superswede]

I 2nd this one!

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look at the actual pictures you will see there is a giant color-blind friendly visually-impaired friendly notice of the denomination on the back of the bills now to help people distinguish. The Giant "100" is in orange.

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[AdmiralXyz]

I believe there was a court ruling that says the Treasury has to do this at some point in the future. To the best of my knowledge, they're still investigating possible options, although if you look at the list of security features for the new bill, one of them is "raised perforations". Perhaps these are an identifier, like Braille?

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[hraefn]

I sympathize with your argument, I really do. Different sized bills would also make counterfeiting more difficult.

However you forget that every bank branch in the country has at least one money counter; how many are there? As an example, Bank of America lists upwards of 6000 branches.

There are something like 400,000 ATMs in the United States as well, how many of those would need modified?

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[PatPending]

I suppose there are $5/$10/$20 readers, though usually at the post office (and hence easy to change from the government's perspective).

You're omitting one of the largest markets for omni-bill readers: casinos. These readers will accept $1 through $100. (I dunno about $1000)

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[Xest]

Many other countries have different sized notes, so I wonder if it would really even be hard or relatively expensive to modify them? The technology is already out there and I'd imagine companies that produce US money counting machines probably also produce money counting machines internationally such that the work could probably be done with existing suppliers.

That's not to say it wouldn't cost more than your average Joe will earn in their entire life time of course, but I doubt the cost would be prohibitively expensive. It comes down the modifications required I suppose- it may be that the machines were built in such a way that there isn't room in the design for modification and they'd have to be completely replaced I guess and certainly at that point it could become an issue!

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[clone53421]

Actually, it’s gold.

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[FriendlyPrimate]

I could see this argument 20 years ago. But does it really matter anymore since CCs have become so ubiquitous? I hardly EVER use paper money anymore. The only time I really ever use it is for tolls, and that's only because I'm too lazy to get EZ-Pass. So it seems like a visually-impaired person should be able to get by without handling paper money at all.

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[Abcd1234]

I could see this argument 20 years ago. But does it really matter anymore since CCs have become so ubiquitous? I hardly EVER use paper money anymore.

Funny, I just switched to a budget where I do the exact opposite. Fixed cash pools are, hands down, the best way to control discretionary spending. Many would be very wise to put away the plastic and go back to an all-cash budget.

Meanwhile, if I were visually impaired, assuming US currency wasn't so retarded, I'd feel a lot more comfortable paying with physical bills rather than trusting a cashier not to defraud me by, say, double-swiping my card.

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[Anonymous Coward]

I find card-only budgeting works better for me, but that's because most of my wasted money is loose change spent on junk food. I use a debit card, though, not credit - I'm still only spending money I have.

I just lost a stone and am spending less, so it's helping.

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[nomorecwrd]

Actually it changes color from gold-orange to blue-greenish when you move it.

We have that in our bills here in Chile (all different colors, very easy to spot different denominations in a stack)

Our New bicentennial billsalso have different sizes to make it even easier to the visually impaired.

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[Abcd1234]

I find card-only budgeting works better for me, but that's because most of my wasted money is loose change spent on junk food. I use a debit card, though, not credit - I'm still only spending money I have.

The problem is that, unless you are keeping an eye on your bank balance constantly, or are making sure to track every little transaction, it's very easy for those day-to-day debit events to add up. Fast.

The trick with budgeting on cash is that you set aside fixed pools of money every week for discretionary spending. eg, $100 for food, $40 for entertainment, etc. Then you withdraw that cash at the beginning of the week/every two weeks/month, and then only spend from that fixed pool. And if you run out of money, well, better find a way to get more, or reallocate your funds as need be.

The result is that you cap your discretionary spending so it can't get away from you (basically turning them into fixed, monthly expenditures). And it also puts you more in touch with how much money you're blowing every month.

Now, obviously this isn't for everyone. Some people are plenty disciplined and don't need a system like this. But for someone like myself who needs to have discipline forced on him :), it works extremely well, and means I can squeeze every last penny out of my monthly budget to maximize savings, debt repayment, etc. And given the average savings to debt ratio in the US (and Canada and probably many other places), I suspect a *lot* of people would benefit from this style of budget.

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[Anonymous Coward]

If they implement braille on bills the same way Canada did a few years ago they'll be gone after the first trip through the laundry and suddenly merchants will be telling you that your perfectly clean laundered money is fake.

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[Paradise Pete]

However you forget that every bank branch in the country has at least one money counter;

My printer has a little plastic dohickey that slides over to accommodate different sizes of paper. Perhaps something like that that would be of some use. Also, where I live the ATMs have no trouble spitting out different sizes of bills.

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[bar-agent]

There's really no excuse for this. The bills should have different color and size to help the visually impaired. There's no good reason not to.

The bills are different colors these days, unless you are using old bills.

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[dAzED1]

80% of the cash I use is used at gas stations that only take cash or ATM. Arco (a BP sub), etc. I never buy anything from a soda or candy vending machine.

"There's no good reason not to." - order? Ease of use? Having them all the same size makes them all line up, and not be in a mess. It makes the numbers line up too, so you can thumb through them fast to see how much of what you have. Do you have stacks of paper that are all disheveled on your desk? Probably - I do too. But when I want my desk to be neat, I take all the 8.5x11" papers in my hands, tap the stack on the bottom to line up that direction, tap on a side to line up in another direction, then viola! A nice, neat, stack of papers. This is only made possible because they're all the same size. Then I can staple them, bind them, etc. The edge of a stack of papers that are lined up is strong, less susceptible to damage; a stack that isn't lined up means the sheets that extend from the stack the furthest will almost certainly have their edges damaged. So on, so forth.

If you've ever done this to a stack of 8.5x11" paper, then you have absolutely no reason at all to say something silly like "There's no good reason not to [make them different sizes]" In fact, there are many, many reasons to not make them different sizes, and only one reason to do it - to help the visually impaired.

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[Anonymous Coward]

My wallet is enough of a mess without having different sized bills cluttering it up.

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[Jaysyn]

Every ATM I've used in the past 5 years only gives 20s, so probably none. Before that it was only 10s & 20s.

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[steelfood]

First you roll out the updates to the machines that need to differenciate bills so that all the machines can handle the new bills. Then you introduce the new bills.

How difficult is that?

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried that. It doesn't work for me. The reality is that everyone is MORE careful with a different set of currency. My problem is that cash burns a hole in my wallet. Sure withdrawing fixed amounts keeps a cap on my limit, but if it's in my wallet I will ALWAYS spend to that cap. This means I'm still wasting money on things I don't need, because my mind says, "hey, it's Thursday and you still have $20 left!"

For me, credit cards are my best form of budgeting. I have no problem signing checks, "it feels like free money because of the float time," cash burns a hole, and debit cards are just cash. However, I was instilled, from a child, with a mortal fear of credit cards. I hate using my credit card, so when its my only form of payment, I'm more reluctant to spend.

It works for me. Just find what works for you. I recommend trying all different methods for awhile.

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[xaxa]

In the UK all ATMs are required to be able to dispense £5, 10 and 20. Almost all of them dispense only £10 and 20 though. These notes are all different sizes, so presumably it's simple to adjust the machine.

(It was in the news recently. They are trialling having £5s available in poorer areas.)

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[Abcd1234]

I tried that. It doesn't work for me. The reality is that everyone is MORE careful with a different set of currency. My problem is that cash burns a hole in my wallet. Sure withdrawing fixed amounts keeps a cap on my limit, but if it's in my wallet I will ALWAYS spend to that cap. This means I'm still wasting money on things I don't need, because my mind says, "hey, it's Thursday and you still have $20 left!"

Why is it in your wallet? Unless you need it, it should be in an envelope or a jar at home. Does this mean you have to plan ahead for daily expenditures? Absolutely! But, you know, that's kinda the idea...

Personally, I have four jars at home: food, entertainment, transportation, and miscellaneous. If I need to buy groceries, I take a bit of money and buy groceries. Then I come home and put the change back in the jar.

After all, you can't spend money you don't have. :) Plus, unless you keep it divided up like this, you can't track what you've spent out of each pool, which'll be a real problem when you blow the rest of your grocery money going out for beers with your buddies...

It works for me. Just find what works for you. I recommend trying all different methods for awhile.

And *that* is absolutely true.

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously haven't seen the movie Daredevil.

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[dAzED1]

very rarely does the cashier touch my card when I'm shopping - generally, I swipe it myself, then put in my pin if it was a debit card (with braille-enabled keypads) or sign if it was a credit card.

Sometimes people still have the behind-the-counter readers, but I very rarely see that these days.

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[DreadPiratePizz]

If you pay for everything with cash, you're actually losing money. Many credit card companies offer things like cash back on purchases, or flier miles, or discounts on cars or whatever. If you are responsible and pay off your bill every month, you're foolish not to use your credit card to take advantage of these things.

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[TangoMargarine]

And what if you want to withdraw an amount that isn't evenly divisible by 20?

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[Jaysyn]

You can't. At least not at any of the ATMs around here.

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[curtix7]

I don't think this would fit into a greatest good for the greatest number model. Yeah, having bills that are the exact same size and shape isn't THAT important to those without visual impairments. But does it really benefit the visually impaired enough to make it worth the minor sacrifice to the majority? Just making bills slightly smaller or larger isn't going to be very effective, they would have to have more dramatic differences like shape (or texture, but texture can solve the problem w/o changing size) and the more the bills change the more of a burdon on those with sight that are trying to stack bills in a wallet or where ever.

I think if this is such an issue it would make more sense to make $5, $20, and $100 coins. I'm gonna assume they would be far easier to recognize than paper money of different shapes. They wouldn't have to be commonly used, the impaired individuals could get them from banks and carry around enough coins to pay the exact amount (within a dollar since the vendors would have normal coins).

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[Abcd1234]

you're foolish not to use your credit card to take advantage of these things.

No, I simply choose a different set of priorities.

Plus, I don't feel those minor benefits outweigh the fact that, by using one of their cards, I'm enriching them and supporting their predatory lending practices.

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[bmajik]

Likewise. I read a Dave Ramsey book.

I've largely abandoned the use of credit cards, although I retain them for fast access to flexible spending power.

But I view the return to a cash-in-hand lifestyle as a half-way point to what I suspect is coming; a goods/barter/specie-currency based economy.

The US Dollar will crash, probably within the next 5 years. When that happens, I won't be fully self sufficient, and I'll want to trade with other people, and I'll need something I can use to do that. The most likely form of post-collapse money will be 22LR ammunition.

We went to Europe a few years ago without having a sufficient amount of cash with us. There were a lot of things we were locked out of doing until we were able to get credit-card cash advances in local currency. I was surprised at how non-credit oriented many places in Germany were.

It's a harrowing feeling: "your money isn't good here".

I suspect that most Americans will get to experience that in their own grocery store before too much longer.

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, is this Abcd1234?? This is completely unrelated to anything above, but I've been trying to find an address to mail you some items you left by our house. Could you give me your home address? Thanks! Hope you're doing great, J.

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[dissy]

But does it really matter anymore since CCs have become so ubiquitous? I hardly EVER use paper money anymore.

I used to live the same way, and only carried tiny amounts of cash, and even then only when I expected to need it (IE parking meters, work where the food/drink machines only take change and ones, etc)

One day my bank decided that they do not have to give me my money I had stored with them, due to some mixup error on their end.

They fully admitted to the error, said it was already corrected, but the lockout on the account would remain for a week as a security fraud measure. 7 whole days I had a six figure balance unavailable to me, and maybe just under $20 in cash on my person.

Ever since then I deal almost exclusively with cash.
I deposit cash into my checking account once a month to pay bills like utilities that do not take cash. Nothing more, and never over a $100 balance at any point in time.

A bank is good and all, as long as after putting MY money in there, they will give me MY money back upon request.
As this is no longer true, and all banks in my city have the same contracts stating they don't have to give you anything ever after taking your money, fuck them.

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[mjwx]

Funny, I just switched to a budget where I do the exact opposite. Fixed cash pools are, hands down, the best way to control discretionary spending. Many would be very wise to put away the plastic and go back to an all-cash budget.

In Australia this cuts down on bank fees. Unless you owe the bank a lot of money you'll be "nickled and dimed" to death, as you Americans would say as we pay per transaction, $25 at the store by EFTPOS costs me $0.5 or more in some cases, ATM withdrawal is free if I use my own banks ATM's.

The best way to control discretionary spending is to put money where you have to jump thorough hoops to access it. I have two bank accounts that are linked to each other, one is an everyday savings account and the other is a high interest savings account. The high interest savings account does not have card access, I have to log on to my internet banking site and transfer money. The incentive I have against this is that I'd lose the 3.25% it's earning just by sitting there.

If you have $5K spare a term deposit is your best friend at the moment.

Re:All US bills still same size, color

[stonewallred]

My buddy, back before he got married to a woman with good sense, used to keep his bill money in his right front pocket and the rest of his money in his left front pocket. Said as long as the left was heavier than the right, he was doing good. Now he has a wife and she manages the money in a much more orderly way. She is still PO'd about a check she wrote me that I lost a few years ago. Seems it was throwing her booking keeping off. I have bank accounts and CCs, yet like the poster above, cash is much easier to budget with. You can look and see how much you have, and usually decide the gee-gaw or hojinky is not worth the money you'd have to spend. And it scales well, from a $.99 coke if you are running low to a $12.00 glass of liquor.

those who deal with lots of cash know

[asoduk]

that the $100 bills stay in circulation much longer than smaller bills. they are exchanged much less frequently. I recently sold something fairly expensive and was paid in cash. the $100 bills in the wad were from 3 different generations of the bill! i suspect that in under the radar circles like gun shows and flea markets, the bills tend to be older.

Re:those who deal with lots of cash know

[Montezumaa]

What is "under the radar" about gun shows or flea markets? These are two perfectly legal and responsible advertising and business models. Also, as money changes hands a lot in those two groups, the bills will probably be newer. Chances are that the older bills will come from the elders in our society, as they tend to be more responsible by saving money and not needlessly blowing it. This is not an absolute statement, as there are some people in this group that are not responsible or just do not have a lot of income that would allow them to really save.

While I do not buy into "government conspiracies", I do have to wonder what might be in these bills that we will not know about. There may be nothing hidden in this new bill, but we might see something in later iterations. Still, this new bill sounds cool.

PopeRatzo: Counterfeiting hurts everyone and it has the ability to hurt everyone in an extreme way. Sure, some small-time counterfeiter will make a negligible difference, over time, it will make a difference. Counterfeiting has the ability to completely crash an economy and bring about great ruin to that economic system. Would you like to living in Germany, post World War I, when bread would cost you billions of Deutsche Marks(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_in_the_Weimar_Republic for just an idea of the problems of over-printed currency).

You also need to remember that Germany, during World War II, was printing various foreign currencies(U.S. Dollar and British Pound) in an attempt to destabilize each currency. While Germany did not have a chance to carry the plan out(due to timing), that plan could have really ruined the economy globally.

Oh yeah, we'll all be carrying bundles of these

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the state of the American economy it's unlikely many people will be seeing any of these anytime soon (until the inflation kicks in, anyway).

Perhaps, like a new jet, it's just another gift from the Treasury to let bankers show off: "Hey, look what I bought with all that money you gave me! More money!"

Why not retire the old bills?

[jonwil]

When Australia switched to the new plastic money, we changed over from old $100 to new $100 (for example) in a short space of time.

Although I guess the total number of AU$100 bills in circulation worldwide is a LOT less than the total number of US$100 bills :)

Re:Why not retire the old bills?

[Animats]

When Australia switched to the new plastic money, we changed over from old $100 to new $100 (for example) in a short space of time.

Foreign holders of US currency would panic if the US did that. There's about $575 billion of US currency in circulation, or about $1200 for each person, including children, in the United States. Obviously most of that is held outside the US. When the US Treasury changes the currency, they do a big outreach program stressing that the old bills aren't becoming obsolete. They don't want all that currency coming back to be exchanged into yuan or euros.

Replace all the bills with coins.

[wiredog]

Long term it'll save lost of money.

Re:Replace all the bills with coins.

[dkleinsc]

Is that a roll of $5 coins in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

Re:Replace all the bills with coins.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which you can spend on typing classes !

Re:Replace all the bills with coins.

[Anonymous Coward]

A $100 gold coin would weigh 2.8 grams at $1100/oz. In comparison, a dime weighs 2.268 grams. Although the weight is similar, the density of gold is over twice that of silver, so a pure coin would be even smaller than a dime. Puts the true value of US currency in perspective doesn't it?

Re:Replace all the bills with coins.

[Tsaot]

Long term it'll save lost of money.

Yeah, that's what happens to all my coinage too.

Re:Replace all the bills with coins.

[gtbritishskull]

Not really. Just makes gold seem very expensive.

It's not about monetary value. It's about power.

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't against counterfeiting because it devalues existing currency. They're against it because it dilutes the power of the artificial monopoly that they hold.

RFID?

[arkham6]

I wonder if the bills will have encoded RFID chips somewhere, somewhat like they do with passports? Being that a lot of 100 bills circulate outside the US, this would be a good way to track them, and see how money passes from person to person. Antiterrorism effect perhaps?

Forget centralized closed source money.

[h00manist]

Lets have open-source software money. Everyone neighborhood or town run their own bank. Most of our work goes to just pay bills because of all this financial waste.

Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS) also known as LETSystems are local, non-profit exchange networks in which goods and services can be traded without the need for printed currency. In some places, e.g. Toronto, the scheme has been called the Local Employment and Trading System.

Re:Forget centralized closed source money.

[denzacar]

Everyone neighborhood or town run their own bank.

Tried that. Didn't work. Great for frauds though.

goods and services can be traded without the need for printed currency.

Tried that loooong ago. It was so cumbersome that it was almost instantly dropped by nearly everyone as soon as currency was invented.
It can be highly entertaining though. For example being paid for your services in chairs or balls of yarn.

Re:Forget centralized closed source money.

[h00manist]

We all spend so much time on money, it's a good to study better it's mechanics. Barter, without currencies, indeed works only in very limited situations - two people only, only if they need each others stuff. Otherwise it becomes difficult to make work. But I have made it work sometimes. Easier to trade between two businesses, as businesses buy lots of different stuff in one central purchasing planning. But actual alternative currencies do work in many places.

Update patch?

[T Murphy]

Anyone know if they've released an update patch yet? I wish they would've warned me before my $100 went obsolete.

(My school subsidizes the Fundamentals of Engineering exam, which was last weekend, otherwise no I wouldn't have a $100 on me).

Plastic money...

[nanoakron]

UK resident here. I personally love it when new technology is introduced into banknotes, but those plastic ones the Australians have had for ages are just plain cool.

The Indonesian plastic Rp100,000 note is also pretty damned cool.

Wish we had 'em.

Re:Plastic money...

[nomorecwrd]

Here in Chile we also have plastic bills ($2,000 Chilean Pesos)
here are some images
and we are introducing even more with new designs to celebrate our bicentennial.
(note that new $10,000 Chilean pesos bill is cotton paper, with 3D stripe and color changing numbers - just like the $100 US will soon have).
Yes, they are cool, with transparent windows, and fully washable. BUT... not too easy to handle (too slippery) and although the are very strong and durable the tiniest cut on one side will tear the bill in two effortlessly.

Re:Plastic money...

[zoney_ie]

You do!

I think it is one of the banks in Northern Ireland, perhaps Northern Bank? They issue a plastic £5 note.

Re:Plastic money...

[karijne]

They seem to be falling out of circulation though, I haven't seen one in years.

Oh man, the North Koreans are going to be pissed!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh man, the North Koreans are going to be pissed!

Numb3rs

[auric_dude]

Charlie Eppes has it covered, see Season 1 Episode 7 of 13 Counterfeit Reality

People still use cash?

[tylersoze]

I mean besides drug lords in movies with suitcases full of hundreds? Wow you learn something new every day. The only thing I use cash for is dollar bills for the vending machine, and sometimes not even then, the one at the last hospital I was at had a card reader.

Re:People still use cash?

[Anonymous Coward]

I always tend to carry a few $100 bills for emergencies. Like needing to take a cab anywhere on short notice, or being able to bribe someone in a hurry.

Re:People still use cash?

[Abcd1234]

Yes, people still use cash. In fact, it's all I use. Why would I work to enrich the credit card companies and banks, contributing to their usury, when I can just use cash and be done with it? Besides, it's a hell of a lot more difficult to have your credit card or debit card double-swiped or read by a tampered-with machine when you don't actually use it anywhere. Lastly, cash makes it *far* easier to track and control spending, which is a very good thing if you want to actually, you know, operate under a controlled budget.

Re:People still use cash?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually cash makes it far *harder* to track spending, and if you have even a modicum of self control the credit card is very useful here.

If you pay for everything with your credit card, it takes literally zero effort to click a button and get a complete record of your monthly transactions. All the financial institutions that I've used even offer a plethora of formats to download your monthly statements that are easily imported into whatever financial tracking program you prefer.

I seriously doubt that many people can sit down with a pile of receipts every month and manually track their finances. When getting a perfect record of all your financial transactions takes a few mouse clicks, a lot more people are going to have a better idea of where their money is going. When you can watch your savings dwindling month after month it's a pretty good motivator for controlling spending.

Re:People still use cash?

[Abcd1234]

Actually cash makes it far *harder* to track spending

Nope, wrong. The problem is you don't know how to do it properly.

The trick is to set aside fixed pools of cash for specific classes of discretionary spending (eg, groceries, etc), and to fill those pools on fixed intervals (say, twice a month). You can then *only* spend from those pools. This controls spending because, obviously, you can spend any more than you've allocated, which turns those variable, discretionary expenses into fixed, well-understood expenses that can be incorporated into a controlled, predictable monthly budget.

With plastic, it's so trivial to simply spend spend spend, without really thinking about it, which is why so many people go into fantastic debt, while simultaneously being extremely inefficient with the money they do make.

When you can watch your savings dwindling month after month it's a pretty good motivator for controlling spending.

ROFL, wow. That's so wrong it's hilarious. The whole point is that most people *don't* monitor their expenditures, so they don't notice their savings dwindling. Worse, many people work out of credit cards, which means it's not their savings that dwindles, it's that their debt climbs, and most people just don't handle that well.

No, sorry, for many many people out there, cash is a *far* better idea (assuming it's done right). Is that a universal rule? No. But if your goal is to tightly control spending, a well-managed, cash-based budget is hands down the best way to go.

Re:People still use cash?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well obviously you are right that for some people cash only is the best way for them to control spending. My point though is that anyone with a bit of self control is benefited by using a credit card for all their transactions.

The number one rule is to not actually buy things on credit, and pay off all of your debt at the end of every billing cycle. If you can commit to doing that then credit cards give you a lot of power for tracking your spending. A lot of people don't track their expenditures because it takes a lot of work, you have to at some point sit down and check the balances of your money pools, go to the back to withdraw money, etc.

With a credit card, or even a debit card it becomes a very simple matter to download your statement every month and import it into Quicken or Microsoft Money or whatever. When you make the barrier to entry easier more people will track their finances.

No matter what method you are using though, cash or debit or credit, the important thing is to have a system and know where your money is going. People who don't budget and spend without thinking or tracking are going to get in trouble no matter what method of spending they choose.

My system it to pay all my expenses with a credit card, and download the csv of my statement from my bank. I have a ~500 line perl script that parses it and write ledger entries for all my expenses. From there is is very simple to track my expenses vs my income, build a budget and track how closely I stick to it. I have seen a huge improvement in my personal understating of my finances and spending habits, but of course not every method is good for every person ymmv.

Re:People still use cash?

[AthleteMusicianNerd]

This is your mindset. I see cash as expendable, and I'm hesitant to swipe a card knowing that I'll have to pay the bill later. Although if one has the mindset of the US government, maybe they don't mind swiping that card knowing full well they'll never pay it back.

Re:People still use cash?

[AthleteMusicianNerd]

This is a very rash generalization. Using your philosophy, we can just leave monetary policy in the hands of frauds who can track your every move, tell you what you should or shouldn't spend your money on and make sure that it's reported it to them properly, else they'll through you in jail.

Re:People still use cash?

[Abcd1234]

Well obviously you are right that for some people cash only is the best way for them to control spending. My point though is that anyone with a bit of self control is benefited by using a credit card for all their transactions.

Yeah, I'm just not convinced that's true, though. Even if you are extremely disciplined, the benefit of fixed-cash-pool budgeting is that your expenditures are 100% predictable every single month. As a result, you can maximize savings and debt repayment because you know precisely what your monthly cashflow will be like.

That said, it really is a matter of taste in the end. I like my system because it's extremely fixed and regimented. X dollars comes in, Y dollars go out in fixed expenses, Z dollars (divided up into pools) are allocated for discretionary spending, and W dollars goes to various savings (general savings, emergency fund, end-of-year taxes, etc). Simple, easy to understand, and above all, predictable.

but of course not every method is good for every person ymmv.

And on that, I think we can definitely agree. :)

Re:People still use cash?

[base3]

If you pay for everything with your credit card, it takes literally zero effort to click a button and get a complete record of your monthly transactions.

Exactly. Oh, you meant get a record of your own transactions--yeah, that too :).

"We have a bank robbery at 50 Main St...

[Anonymous Coward]

... suspect was wearing 3D movie googles..."

Don't counterfeiters prefer euro notes?

[petes_PoV]

Given that the world's highest denomination banknote is for €500 the same amount of effort that goes into forging an old $100 piece of paper gives higher returns with higher value notes. All this new tech in ther 100USD will do is make the baddies concentrate more on easier notes, it won't actuallt stop counterfeiting.

Re:Don't counterfeiters prefer euro notes?

[chriswik]

Given that the world's highest denomination banknote is for €500

Don't know where you got your information.. Here in Switzerland we have a 1000 Frank note, which is about €700 at todays exchange rate.

Re:Don't counterfeiters prefer euro notes?

[clone53421]

But then it’s someone else’s problem.

Re:Don't counterfeiters prefer euro notes?

[gawaino]

You're way off. Singapore $10,000 notes are worth €5,474 at the moment. US $10,000 are still valid, although not produced anymore (collectors will pay a big premium for them).

Re:Don't counterfeiters prefer euro notes?

[gawaino]

Given that the world's highest denomination banknote is for €500

€500 is not the highest in the world. Try 10,000 Singapore dollars. Heck, even 1000 Swiss franc bills are worth more.

What's The Point?

[suss]

All older bills are valid until they wear out. In other words; this is a pointless exercise unless they set an expiry date for older bills.

Re:What's The Point?

[jockeys]

not entirely. bills wear out fairly quickly, and thus can be phased in.

I took a tour of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing the last time I was in DC and the guide commented that bills almost never last more than ten years, and the smaller denominations are usually "retireable" after five or less.

Re:What's The Point?

[minerat]

All older bills are valid until they wear out. In other words; this is a pointless exercise unless they set an expiry date for older bills.

No, it isn't pointless. By virtue of the fact that the average lifetime of a $100 bill in circulation is 5 years, seeing older $100s will be less common after 5-10 years. When older bills are used, they'll raise suspicion, thereby reducing a counterfeit note's utility.

Re:What's The Point?

[LordKronos]

The idea is that the banks gradually remove them from circulation by sending them in to be destroyed and replaced with modern currency. It takes a while, but eventually the old bills become uncommon enough that their use becomes more suspect. For example, this is still valid us currency:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:One_US_dollar_1917.jpg

but if someone tried to pay me with one, I think I'd be a bit suspicious. Especially if they tried using a whole bunch of them at once. Counterfeiters don't just spend a $20 here and a $20 there...they are in it big time and have loads of bills they need to unload.

Re:What's The Point?

[Anonymous Coward]

If USD are anything like British Sterling (Bank of England specifically) banknotes, than the lowest denomination £5 note only has a lifetime of 1 year, and only 5 or more for the highest £50. So the window for replacement isn't that long. They naturally expire quite quickly.

Re:What's The Point?

[firewrought]

This is a pointless exercise unless they set an expiry date for older bills.

Overseas banks will refuse the older version of the bills at some point in the relatively near future. Domestic banks will cooperate with the Fed to remove old 100's from circulation. The cost of manufacturing fakes will rise, the ability to fence them will decrease, and the amount of time they stay in circulation will also decrease. The overall effect will (hopefully) be to reduce currency dilution.

Re:What's The Point?

[Alex Pennace]

All older bills are valid until they wear out. In other words; this is a pointless exercise unless they set an expiry date for older bills.

More accurately, all bills are valid until the Federal Reserve shreds them.

The more interesting point in a bill's life is when it is deemed no longer fit for further circulation. This happens when a bill lands at a bank and doesn't meet the fitness requirements spelled out at http://www.frbservices.org/files/operations/pdf/FRB_Fitness_guidelines.pdf . Aside from declaring worn bills to be unfit, the fitness requirements also cast all older bills ($20s, $10s, and $5s before the first series of redesigns) into the unfit-for-further-circulation pile.

This strategy isn't perfect. There are many old $20s, $10s and $5s that never made it to a bank. But it is good enough considering it was successful in making those old bills a small fraction of what is currently circulating. Hopefully, the older bills are more likely to be scrutinized as they come through.

Re:What's The Point?

[xaxa]

£5 notes in the UK last about a year, and (presumably?) have a lower circulation than $1 bills.

Re:What's The Point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Define "valid". There are many businesses that won't accept current $100 bills out of fear they may be counterfeit. These businesses can now change their policy from "we do not accept $100 bills" to "we accept the new $100 bills, but not the old ones". That's a win-win situation for both businesses and consumers.

Re:What's The Point?

[HTH NE1]

Collectors also contribute to removing old currency from distribution. I'm holding onto examples of multiple revisions of $5 and $10 bills.

I'm surprised that the features of this new $100 survived the crumpler test. Basically, it has to survive mechanically crushing the bill into a tube approximately one inch long and 1/4 inch diameter and retrieval without destroying the security feature. Holograms tend to get destroyed by this test. (Why so extreme? The only reason I can think of is so that it would survive ingestion in an established container used by espionage agents.)

Re:What's The Point?

[arisvega]

The point is (at least one of them) making them damn hard to forge. I've seen 3D ribbons like the one described in TFA, a feature that chalenges one's perception a bit with the way it waves on and about (at least until you get used to it) and really stands out.

The € bills don't implementet it, but it is my understanding that there are other mechanisms in place, much more subtle-- magnetized ink, miniscule amounts of radioactive isotopes on the big bill(s), and a bunch more that I shouldn't mention.

This is aimed at non-US countries

[vinn01]

Most US $100 notes are circulated outside of the US. I don't know the percentage, but it's very high. Aside from legal users, there is a lot of people with large caches of $100 notes that our government doesn't like.

In non-US countries the the phrase "legal tender for all debts public and private" carries no weight. They can be picky about what notes they accept. Every time that new US notes are issued, people with large hoards of US cash find that their old notes are no longer accepted and they have to scramble to get new notes. They get noticed.

Re:This is aimed at non-US countries

[h00manist]

The amount of money printed to pay for the banks bailout was quite a bit. They are indeed needing to reduce inflation, and this is one way. Some old bills, as well as fake bills will both get knocked out of the money supply. A few people will indeed simply accept they lost the money of their old bills, but it's hard to figure out how many. A lot of the old bills will find their way back to the US or some currency-exchange place to get traded.

Re:This is aimed at non-US countries

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you are partly wrong about this - the US government LOVES people hoarding $100 notes overseas. The $100 represents a loan given to the US government from another party, a loan that will almost certainly never have to be repaid. The US wins. Plus, it counts as good advertising - the dollar is more likely to keep its "reserve currency" status when it is the secondary or even primary currency in many countries around the world. So long as people believe the dollar is valuable, it remains valuable.

Re:This is aimed at non-US countries

[vinn01]

Yes, the US government loves people hoarding $100 notes overseas. But the US government doesn't love criminals who hoard $100 notes. The way that the US ensures those $100 notes held by the criminals are never honored (and the loan repaid) is to issue new $100 notes.

The criminals have an extra hard time trying to change the old $100 notes for the new $100 notes. Even honest oversea $100 note hoarders will be burdened with changing to new notes, but they don't have to worry about exposure.

Need to eliminate the Dollar note, and Cent coins.

[Darth Sdlavrot]

A dollar today has the buying power of 6 in 1940. But don't take my word for it, here's one of many inflation calculators http://www.coinnews.net/tools/cpi-inflation-calculator/

Can you imagine your grandparents carrying a wallet stuffed with 5 notes? Or a pocket full of .06 coins?

Time to get rid of them. Time to stop wasting 100s of millions of dollars every year printing and minting them.

Re:Need to eliminate the Dollar note, and Cent coi

[Darth Sdlavrot]

Damn slashdot swallowed my cent characters. Hey slashdot, it's 2010, can't we join the 21st century and allow ISO8859-1 characters?

A dollar today has the buying power of 6 cents in 1940. But don't take my word for it, here's one of many inflation calculators http://www.coinnews.net/tools/cpi-inflation-calculator/ [coinnews.net]

Can you imagine your grandparents carrying a wallet stuffed with 5 cent notes? Or a pocket full of .06 coins?

Time to get rid of them. Time to stop wasting 100s of millions of dollars every year printing and minting them.

Re:Pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Dollar

Explain the security features to the counerfeiters

[Anonymous Coward]

The government has prepared education resources in 25 languages to inform the public about the design changes and is giving people a chance to view the new bills on its website.

Too much.

[Anonymous Coward]

I just wish I could afford one.

Not hard, with decent planning

[bradley13]

In many other countries, the bank notes are different sizes, and the designs are completely revised every few years. Somehow, the ATMs and bill-counters don't have to be replaced. Probably because they don't rely on 1950s mechanical technology. Even so, it's not hard.As long as the treasury lets it be known that more and more bills will change size, the ATM manufacturers will account for this in new models. Old ATMs will be restricted to handing out the "old size" notes - no problem, because when you administer an ATM, you can decide what bank notes it hands out. By the time all of the bills have been modernized, the ATMs will have been replaced anyway. Seriously, the bills in the US are terrible from an accessibility point of view.

Re:Pointless. - Say hello to the IRS

[Anonymous Coward]

That's an exchange of capital, and the IRS DOES want it's cut. They don't want a part of your house or pen. They want LEGAL TENDER!

http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420.html

$10.000 bill

[nomorecwrd]

$10.000 (as in 10.000 pesos :-D )

We have that 3D stripe in out new (bicentennial) 10.000 chilean pesos bill, and the optical effect is amazing.
You can really see the images form some milimiters deep in the bill.

Nice to see the US is catching up with technology ;-)

Sounds like a great trip toy

[Anonymous Coward]

seriously.. all kinds of trippy effects in the new 100 bill.. sounds like fun!

The real threat

[operagost]

The Treasury acts like counterfeiting is a great threat to the value of the dollar, when the Federal Reserve and the US government are the greatest threat. The dollar is fiat currency, and with the recession, there's NOTHING behind it-- yet Congress keeps spending. They just don't like the competition from the counterfeiters.

Re:The real threat

[jimicus]

Very few countries have commodity-backed currencies these days. The world hasn't ended yet.

Though I grant you it does appear that nobody really knows how the wheels continue to stay on...

Money worth face value

[mcguiver]

Maybe we will get lucky and if the Treasury keeps putting high tech processing into the bills they may actually end up being worth their face value.

Re:Oh man, the North Koreans are going to be pisse

[xaxa]

Oh man, the North Koreans are going to be pissed!

North Korea prefers Euros.

Open Government - Release the Specs

[waitwonder]

Did they release the complete specs? we can have open source project for that.

Counterproductive

[Anonymous Coward]

There have been so many redesigns of American money in recent years, that I don't know what it's supposed to look like anymore.

My Favorite line in the article

[Pete Venkman]

"The changes are aimed at thwarting counterfeiters who are armed with ever-more sophisticated computers, scanners and color copiers."

It won't matter...

[Megane]

...cashiers will still swipe it with that special marker pen.

Re:It won't matter...

[kimvette]

. . . and I'll scold them each time and ask them why they're too lazy to look at the watermark, the security ribbon, the color-shifting ink, the microprint, and eighteen gadzillion other security measures. Why deface the currency when by doing so you are breaking the law by covering up the anti-counterfeiting measures with ink, leading to the currency being unusable?

Blind people

[flyingfsck]

I find it strange that US notes do not make provision for blind users. The notes are all the same size, which is totally retarded.

There's a reason money's still green

[Anonymous Coward]

I think most of the non-US people here are missing the real reason why all our bills are green and the same size: We like it that way. Sure, there's a few people here and there who would like their wallet to spew forth colors and shapes and sizes like some degenerate children's book, but by and large the US population is used to big wads of green and sees no compelling reason to change. Sure, plastic money lasts longer, but the US public doesn't give a shit. Raised marks and such could be used to help the blind. The counterfeiting issue wouldn't even be fixed because there's no way the US would require the complete world exchange of the 6.5 BILLION existing $100 bills--they'd keep taking old bills for decades.

Every time the issue has come up, changing off of universally sized, green bills has proven extremely unpopular in the US. THAT is why we don't change.

Re:There's a reason money's still green

[91degrees]

People are generally against change. If you forced different sized bills on people they'd get used to this in a month or so and wonder why they ever cared in the first place.

Britain didn't change to a decimalised currency until the 1970's. Were people against it? Some were. In the 90's the 5p and 10p and 50p coins were shrunk. People objected to that as well. Nobody would want to change back though.

There wouldn't be a pressing need to change the existing bills. They're locked in a vault somewhere. They're not going to be used in a local shop where the owners rarely see $100 bills. They'll be sent to the US government who are quite capable of telling you whether they're faked or not and have a database of bills in circulation.

Re:There's a reason money's still green

[NeoSkandranon]

True story. I'd be surprised if the rest of the world hasn't figured out that the majority of the US public are too dim to realize if something is a benefit if it has the slightest hint of inconvenience.

Avatar Bills?!

[nnnnnnn]

"new blue security ribbon will give a 3-D effect to the micro-images "

Blue 3D images eh? So basically Avatar Bills.

Preview is my friend...

[wiredog]

Pity I dno't use my friends...

1988

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't the article state that they started using this in 1988?

Add 20 years, 2008; the patent should be up at this point.

Oblig. Jay Z quote

[ari_j]

I've been spending hundreds since they had small faces.

Its a security thing

[RobertLTux]

The thing is if you have a fairly low "floor limit" then it makes getting robbed a whole lot less likely

I used to work for a place that anything bigger than a ten got dropped into the safe as soon as possible (gas station) also it was policy that if you had more than a hundred dollars in your drawer you did a safe drop.

Now flat refusing to take a $50 (or $100) is a subset of that (personally i would have gone ahead and taken it if it wasn't a fire on the spot offense).

Re:Its a security thing

[BranMan]

Well, if whenever you had more than $100 in your drawer you had to do a safe drop at that point, you don't even have enough money in the drawer to give someone change for a $100. Hence the sign

welcome to the real world

[roman_mir]

in the fake world of cash printing and market manipulation real money of-course is this, accept no substitutes (and by the way, it has the security features built right into the atomic structure.)

Stop!

[chucklebutte]

Messing! With! My! God! Damn! Money! For fucks sakes, it stopped looking like real money decades ago, enough already! Try making the current money worth something before you spend money to make new money that is just as worthless or even more so than the original money you used to make it!

At the bank, you dumbfuck.

[Anonymous Coward]

All you have to do is go to your bank and trade $100 for one. The cost to you is zero.

Christalmighty, why the fuck were you modded "funny"?

Re:At the bank, you dumbfuck.

[McGiraf]

Don't ask me, I have no self-moderation.

Disappearing libertybell

[Anonymous Coward]

how prophetic!

Re:Disappearing libertybell

[base3]

Was also thinking that that was quite apropos!

What's the point . . .

[base3]

. . . if they aren't going to recall all the existing $100s in circulation and declare them worthless and no longer legal tender as of some date certain? If the current ones are easier to counterfeit, why wouldn't the counterfeiters just keep counterfeiting those?

Still no braille?

[guruevi]

I think the blind community has been asking for braille on notes for years now. You make a new bill, you can add braille insets to it. The little additions are nice but not to persons that can't see them to begin with.

Redundancy in counterfeiting measures?

[bjdevil66]

While I'm all for protecting the currency from counterfeiters, doesn't there come a point where the 58th measure taken on these bills (vs. just say, 57) is no longer helpful due to human nature/laziness?

How many people here check EVERY $100 they receive for EVERY watermark or other countermeasure on these bills?

I seriously doubt that if I walk into a Home Depot or Wal-Mart with $1000 in cash to buy something that they're going to check EVERY countermeasure. I'll be lucky if they pull out a black pen or do a cursory scan of each bill...

Admittedly, maybe banks check every bill they receive with some high-tech equipment I'm not aware of for every countermeasure automatically, but back at the cash register, haven't we painted the bills enough different colors?

What?!?

[snspdaarf]

But what will I do with all the hundreds I have stashed in the mattress?

Notes?

[skywire]

A one-hundred dollar 'note' that promises to give you another one-hundred dollar 'note' in exchange is no note. It is a self-referential monstrosity. The wording "THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE" that appears on it is an insider joke at the expense of the schmucks who accept them.

Except...

[denzacar]

100$ bills are waaaay easier to counterfeit. Why?
Cause you can still print the same 100s from 20, 30, 50 years ago. Old 100s are still legal tender.
All dollar bills are the same size, shape and color so you can bleach "smaller" bills and reprint them.
And as you still need dollar currency to buy oil - they are much more common around the world than any other currency.

Euros on the other hand have a varying size, color palette, and until this 100$ bill came out - better anti-counterfeiting measures.

So why not counterfeit older generation currency?

[Albertosaurus]

Wouldn't it make sense for a counterfeiter to try to fake older generation currency without the modern security features? It would still be accepted as legal tender.

Back to the topic...

[BrokenHalo]

I fail to understand why the US has been so sluggish in taking any useful measures to prevent counterfeiting of currency. For instance, it is typical for other nations to use plastic instead of paper, which severely limits the range of techniques available to the forger while offering a wide range of security features. The US treasury's practice of clinging to that same murky-green ink on paper for all dnominations is absurd if not downright stupid.

I will gladly ...

[PPH]

... dispose of all of your old $100 bills for a nominal fee. Just bundle them up and ship them to me.

Re:So why not counterfeit older generation currenc

[bugs2squash]

Or at least make use of a limited window of time when lots of people know that there is a new bill design coming, but few people have actually seen one. Perhaps the counterfeiters should just make something up; their design might be better than the feds and gain more acceptance.

Just wonderful

[kimvette]

As usual, the voids working registers at discount stores and fast food "restaurants" will refuse the new "counterfeit" bills because they don't follow the news and the months of notice leading up to the release of redesigned currency.

Not yet.

[Nick Driver]

You know the govt probably wants pretty badly to RFID all currency. Would make it trivial for police to know how much cash you've got on you from a distance.

Lack of competition

[Gorimek]

Here's my simple theory:

Americans travel very little to other countries, and are therefore very rarely exposed to other currencies. When you've never seen any alternatives, you're very reluctant to change what you have.

So the treasury is very slowly introducing slightly colored bills, over the last decade. There's some grumbling, but it's being accepted. This will solve the problem of having to read to know your bill.

Different sizes, dollar coins or plastic bills will probably not come around for a long time.

see, I don't get this

[Anonymous Coward]

You say people sitting on their cash is bad. But yet we hear economists saying we have to save more. One of you is obviously wrong.

Re:see, I don't get this

[NeoSkandranon]

When economists say save more i believe that it's implied "save more in a bank/investment"

That's different than socking it away because financial institutions can do things with it in the meantime and you earn interest.

Could be wrong.

don't forget the $2 bills!

[j-beda]

While at the bank, pick up some $2 bills - they are lots of fun too!

They take up half as much space in the wallet as an equal value of $1 bills.

You could even track them via the http://wheresgeorge.com/ website - there seem to be a bunch of people who specialize in $2 bills, called "Top Toms" at http://www.primereloading.com/z/toptoms.htm

The Federal Reserve is NOT publicly owned

[nido]

If you are going to claim that a government agency is defrauding you,

The "Federal" Reserve is NOT a government agency: it's a public-private partnership. The Senate confirms the board of govenors. Member banks own the Federal Reserve's stock, and earn 6% per year return. It wasn't until the 1960's that excess profits were turned over to the Department of the Treasury.

For the government, the difference between borrowing credit created with accounting entries from a private bank and borrowing the same sort of credit from the Federal Reserve is that borrowing from the Fed is nearly interest-free. That is true today, but it has not always been true. Congressman Wright Patman, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee, wrote in a 1964 treatise called A Primer on Money:

“The Federal Reserve Banks create money out of thin air to buy Government Bonds from the U.S. Treasury . . . [creating] out of nothing a . . . debt which the American people are obliged to pay with interest.”

Patman was outraged at the inequity of this practice and boldly agitated for Congress to nationalize the privately-owned Federal Reserve, a move that would have allowed the government to issue the national money supply directly. Needless to say, however, this proposal met with strong opposition. Nationalization did not happen, but the Fed did have to compromise. According to Jerry Voorhis:

“As a direct result of logical and relentless agitation by members of Congress, led by Congressman Wright Patman as well as by other competent monetary experts, the Federal Reserve began to pay to the U.S. Treasury a considerable part of its earnings from interest on government securities. This was done without public notice and few people, even today, know that it is being done. It was done, quite obviously, as acknowledgment that the Federal Reserve Banks were acting on the one hand as a national bank of issue, creating the nation’s money, but on the other hand charging the nation interest on its own credit – which no true national bank of issue could conceivably, or with any show of justice, dare to do.”

--Monetize This!

Nothing good comes from letting private banks create the money supply.

Choice

[muphin]

what you're forgetting is choice, when one makes a decision to put something outt here, one will see the choice people choose; no debate will solve anything beacuse its only 2 parties with 2 different perceptions.
When the government finally decides to go through with this, it isnt going to be overnight, firstly they will give plenty of time for manufacturers and owners to upgrade facilities, they will then start using dual tender, slowly reduce the amount of old tender and over the period of 10-20 years slowly phase out the old notes. then people will be used to the new notes and not notice the changes.

Euro ???

[FragHARD]

If it looks like a Euro.. and it smells like a Euro... it is probably just as worthless as a Euro ;-)

Irony

[Anonymous Coward]

a disappearing Liberty Bell in an inkwell

Compromising freedom for control of the currency? Irony.

Don't forget special federal protections

[snowwrestler]

The best reason to use a credit card is that there are federal protections on credit cards that do not apply to cash. For instance, if you are mugged and promptly notify your CC company that your credit card was stolen, you cannot be held liable for more than $50 of charges to the card by criminals, by federal law. But if you are mugged and they take your cash, it's gone.

HAHAHA

[Mana Mana]

This is common in NYC. Here MCDonalds, Wendy'ses, a subway clerk wont accept 50s or 100s. A subway clerk wont accept pennies, by MTA edict. A local East Asian market wont accept charges for less than "$10," flouting city and CC co. law, a common occurrence. In NYC you can't have and will be laughed at for _inquiring_ whether soda refills are free at a fast food hamburger place, common practice in most of the USA.

Re:Wish we had 'em.

[arisvega]

Then work for 'em, boy.