Two comments on the column about counterfeiting money:
The microprint which reads “The United States of America” on series 1990 and later bills is most definitely readable by the naked eye. I have a 1995 $5 bill in front of me, and I have to squint a bit, but I can read it. OTOH, the new (ugly) bills have a much smaller font, and those ones are no longer legible… Now where’s my microscope…
Stopping the creation of $100 bills would not help against counterfeit bills very much, at least for a while. After all, old bills are still valid currency, so if I have an old $100 bill, I could still spend it. (To whit, the old $20 bills are still perfectly valid currency, even though the new $20 bills have been around for a while…) They would, of course, slowly disappear from circulation, but that takes a while, and old ones would still be considered valid currency, and so counterfeits could continue to arise…
Sure, but as the legitimate old $100 bills become rare, people will look much more closely at any old $100 bills they do get, thus counterfeits will be more likely to be caught. Consider the scrutiny you would get if you walked into a car dealership and tried to buy a car with a $10,000 bill!
Sure, coming up with new $100 bills won’t stop counterfeiting of the old bills immediately, but it’s still better than having no change in the bill at all.
The best form of currency protection that I’ve seen is the Australian money. All the notes are plastic, with clear windows through them, special symbols on both sides that form a new image when it is held up to the light and obviously, microprinting. However, if you ask me, all this does is make it next to impossible for ordinary people to forge money. Professionals can do it, and simply because the notes are plastic and alright nobody even bothers to check if it is fake or not. Being a country with very little crime, nobody much cares anyway. ‘Australia’s Most Wanted’ did a bit on the first stash of counterfeit bills and then decided to follow it up with a story on a woman stealing magazines from outside a newspaper… But, at least our cash is the most advanced in the world, even if it isn’t worth anything. It might be wise for America to follow suit with issuing plastic money, that way all the trillions of dollars worth of paper money that people keep under their bed would surface and the overinflated economy would collapse…
Interesting about Australian money. Oh, and thank you again, Arnold, for posting links for the columns. Please remember to do this when you start threads, guys.
Jill