Treasury Goes High-Tech With Redesigned $100 Bills 515
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."
Re:Wot? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Still out of date (Score:2, Interesting)
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?
Is blue harder to copy? (Score:1, Interesting)
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?
Re:Wot? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Re:Still out of date (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Plastic money... (Score:3, Interesting)
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:Wot? (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
This is aimed at non-US countries (Score:5, Interesting)
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:All US bills still same size, color (Score:4, Interesting)
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:Need to eliminate the Dollar note, and Cent coi (Score:2, Interesting)
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] [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:Wot? (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Still out of date (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [usatoday.com]. 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 (Score:3, Interesting)
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:time for a change (Score:3, Interesting)
|| 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 (Score:3, Interesting)
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...).
Notes? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:The Real Counterfitters are The Fed (Score:2, Interesting)
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/ [billshrink.com]