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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."
...that mimics the virtue it symbolises.
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.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
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.
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.