Did they really just anounce it?! I was at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington D.C. on Memorial Day, and on the tour they told us the money was going to be more colorful. It was news to me, but I didn’t think I was getting the information before the rest of the world.
I don’t get these changes. I truly don’t. The security precautions are as good as the cashier you hand the bills to. If he or she can’t tell the difference between a fake and the genuine article, it doesn’t matter how many subtle changes you make to it.
I think the point is that even a subtle change can make it much more difficult to conterfeit a note. Check out our polymer Australian notes. The level of detail is simply incredible. Some of the more subtle details would make them very difficult to reproduce.
Also, I think a cashier would be able to tell the difference between a note with a different background colour - subtle or not - and a counterfeit. A bank teller certainly could.
You have cashiers that will accept $3 bills out there. Granted, not everyone is that stupid, but do you think a watermark or an off centered picture is going to make the difference between acceptance and refusal?
You change the color and that just means that counterfeiters will change their color too. Or use the old ones anyway. Why not? It’s not as if bills have an expiration date after which they’re no longer good.
Bottom line: every security measure is only as good as the cashier you hand the bill to. Period.
Right on! It certainly is about time! A woman legislator proposed 50 years or so ago, different colored bills, green on one side and different colors for the denominations on the other. Her hide-bound male colleagues laughed her down.
Have all the bills the same size and color makes as much sense as would having all the coins alike except for the number minted on them.
It would complicate scheduling the print jobs at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, but being able to solve such problems is why they make the big bucks. After all, the various mints manage to do an equivalent job with coins.
The integrity of currency is NOT a chain, only strongest as its weakest link. Cashiers are part of the money exchange process, but they aren’t the be-all and end-all. Would YOU accept a $3 if it was given to you as change from said ‘stupid’ cashier? Of course not. You’d speak up. Same as a bank teller would when obviously counterfeit notes were presented for deposit. What happens when people start objecting to receiving counterfeit currency? The level of public awareness increases. The stupid cashier become less stupid.
The idea of adding new colouring is (1) to make the fake currency obviously counterfeit so that people such your perceptive self and the trained bank teller will notice fake notes and reject them; and (2) to make it more difficult for counterfeiters to produce convincing fakes.
It’s about time. I swear we have the most boring money in the world. I imagine that the denominations are hard for people with poor eyesight to tell apart, also. I know drunk people have trouble with it. (When I was a dancer, I remember a really drunk guy who gave a girl a $100 instead of a $5 and didn’t even realize it)
Now, considering that we have been good enough to harmonize our coin size, may I suggest blue for the $5s, purple for the $10s, pink for the $50s, and brown for the $100s. The good news is that you get to keep green for the $20s, which I understand to be the most popular denomination.