Slashdot Mirror
Press Used To Print Millions of US Banknotes Seized In Quebec
An anonymous reader writes "The Canadian Royal Mounted Police report: An offset printing press used to manufacture counterfeit $20 banknotes was seized by the RCMP and US Secret Service. This significant seizure was made earlier today in the Trois-Rivières area. The authorities had been looking for this offset press for several years. A large quantity of paper was also seized by police, that could have been used by the counterfeiters to manufacture from $40-$200 million. The very high quality counterfeit notes were virtually undetectable to the naked eye. Some of the features they had were uncommon, including the type of paper used, which was especially made with a Jackson watermark and a dark vertical stripe imitating the security thread found in authentic notes."
The Australians license the polymer process to a lot of countries (including Canada) and an offshoot of the Australian Reserve Bank actually prints polymer notes for about 30 countries directly including Mexico.
switch to australian made notes, i'd like to see them try and replicate those notes!
Yes, I've advocated the US switching to Aussie plastic ever since my first experience with it when I visited Oz in 1995. Canada is now doing it and Mexico has been using it for several years. Even the damn Romanians are using it! The polymer money has its detractors (it's slippery and doesn't fold nicely unless you put a book on the fold for a month and then you can't get the fold out) but it's pretty much damn impossible to counterfeit unless you're a government. And I suspect even the North Koreans will have trouble with it since I have no doubt the Aussies will ever license the technology to them for obvious reasons.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
Canada makes polymer bills. The first polymer bill produced was the $100 CAD. Not too long after it was released, counterfeits were reported. This is a CBC story from May 2013. Too bad, for the longest time $100 and $50 paper bills weren't accepted at retail even if legal tender for fear it was counterfeit. Hopefully this doesn't happen with the new polymer bills.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com...
It steals nothing. My $100 in the bank is worth $105 after the fed increases the money supply 5%. My house goes from $200,000 to 210,000, again, matching the inflation.
What? Inflation makes your buying power less not more. The house may go up in (numeric) value, but you $100 in the bank is worth less now since it's not worth as much in actual exchange for goods and services.
It's still printing money.
My left hand borrows money from the future and passes them to my right hand which gives you cash. What does that really look like to the rest of the world in practice?
Or how about this, I lend 9 trillion dollars "from the future" to my friends at below market interest rates. My friends make a few millions or even billions with it and pay me back in full (can't be that hard - it's below market rates after all). So how's that not printing money? It may not be printing trillions but it's printing millions or billions.