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

Still out of date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Re:Still out of date

[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Re:Still out of date

[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Re:Still out of date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Re:Still out of date

[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Re:Still out of date

[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

[ColdWetDog]

They are heavy, space intensive, and loud.

Sounds like, um, sounds like....

Oh never mind.

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...

[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: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:I don't get it...

[clone53421]

They get the paper by bleaching $1s.

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: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: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: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

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.