Congress has forbidden monkeying with the one-spot exactly because it is such an obvious good idea. That would reduce the need for paper from a single firm. That firm supports it local congress critters. You can guess the rest.
A couple folks have mentioned Martin Luther King, Jr. for monetary honors. FWIW, I’ve bought a few savings bonds, and he’s on the $100 bond. (Nope, there’s nothing on the back side.)
I love the idea of Mark Twain. I’d put him on the £1000000 bank not of course, but unfortunately that would take more than your regular redesign.
Non Presidents/Statesmen I’d put on currency (with no real reason for the denominations):
$1- Sacagawea (to replace the disastrous $1 coin of her [which was chosen for the fact that it’s the Information Age and she was the first “search Injun”]*)
$2- Harriet Tubman (to make up to Sally Hemings’s having to endure Thomas Jefferson being on the current $2 bill)
$5- Mary Pickford & Douglas Fairbanks (what’s more American than movies?)
$10- Lewis & Clark (just like they used to be)
$20- John Calhoun & Henry Clay (I know, they were statesmen, but whose presence on $20 bill would piss off Jackson’s ghost more?)
$50- Mark Twain (he did publish Grant’s memoirs after all)
$100- Truman Capote (he used enough of them to snort coke at 54, but mainly he’s here because of how much it would piss off Jerry Falwell and his cronies.
What would be cool would be to have a series of notes: Famous Native Americans, Famous Actors, Famous Writers, etc…
Others I’d consider (all dead- I wouldn’t break tradition by putting the living on currency):
Malcolm X (on the ten of course), because I admire him but mainly because it’d piss off all the right people
Eleanor Roosevelt
Powhatan & Pocahontas (or Wahunsunacock and Matoaka if you prefer)
Edith Bolling Galt Wilson
Thomas Edison (a total bastard of an individual but he changed the world for the better)
Philo T. Farnsworth (his face framed by a TV set, of course)
Brigham Young (love or hate his religious views, he expanded the territory of the U.S. like nobody’s business)
Sophie Irene Loeb (not a good bio, but she’s one of the most unsung heroines of U.S. history imo, plus she was a poor Jewish immigrant- three things we have none of on currency [well, Hamilton was an immigrant, but the U.S. wasn’t a country when he came over])
Joseph (etc.etc.) Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de la Fayette (without whom we’d be spending pounds sterling instead of dollars)
George Wythe (possibly the most brilliant and open mind of the Founders [and most tragic death)
Aaron Burr (anybody who dropped a Hamilton like he did can’t be all bad, plus if we’d let him go about his business we wouldn’t have the problem with Mexicans crossing the borders today [because they’d be Burrians])
Albert Einstein
Alexander Graham Bell
Sojourner Truth
Sitting Bull (previously on U.S. currency, as were Martha Washington, Samuel Morse and many others)
PS- I delivered that Sacagawea “search Injun” line so many times in Alabama when that coin was issued. Thought it was clever. Nobody laughed. sigh
PPS- In a rant on gay marriage I once used the faces on currency as a study group for how unchanging marriage is (scroll down)
I want to see that great American speaker and entrepeneur on our currency: P. T. Barnum. I think he embodies the spirit of America!
(Like it or hate it, I think it’s true.)
Hot chicks!
And American history (for America, of course. Britain gets British history and chicks.)
Even better: Combine the two. Hot history chicks! I say Peggy Shippen on the $1. (Based purely on: http://www.webcomicsnation.com/ericburns/stark/series.php?name=stark&view=current)
Non-American here, but there are a few, well… what we Aussies like to call “rough heads” that would be great on your money:
- Bobcat Goldthwait
- Nixon
- Letterman
- Johnny Cash
- Walter Matthau
I dunno… ugly bastards seem to translate well to that sort of thing.
An electric blue bank note with Tesla on it.
I’ve been much amused by the currency issued in Eric Flint’s 1632 series. I’m not going to get out the books and try to find it, so if you want to know what’s on all of them, you’ll hafta do your own research (unless another reader of the series puts up the list).
It has a (IIRC) ten point (prongs on the antlers) buck (male whitetail deer) on the $1 and Johnny Cash on the $20.
Personally, I don’t care who’s on what IRL except that it would make me soooooo happy if they’d just take Andy Jackson, the NDN’s two-faced friend, off the $20.
$1 - Curly
$2 - Shemp
$5 - Larry
$10 - Moe
$20 - Groucho
$50 - Chico
$100 - Harpo
I’ve thought for years that Madison deserved the honor, and I’d like to see John Marshall on something as well. And Thomas Jefferson needs to be on a bill people actually use. Let’s take over the $20 and the $50 for starters.
The Perfect Master, of course. Then we’d at last know what he looks like.
Of course, what we’d probably end up with is a figure with a bag over his head.
DD
Yup, and the $5 has a pair of hands working on a lump of dough, and the $10 has a loaf of bread.
Gotta love it now that Stoner is part of the Establishment. 
He was on the $5000 dollar bill, not that I’ve ever seen one. I imagine they’ve been out of circulation for a while.
I wonder how Theodore Roosevelt made it onto Mount Rushmore but not currency.
I figured it was something like this that keeps the single around, but why won’t they allow it to be redesigned? I’d use a blowup of the same portrait, and put a picture of Washington crossing the Delaware on the back.
I wouldn’t change much else, except to revert back to the old picture of the White House on back of the twenty. The current one looks too much like the Treasury building on the ten. And that new portrait of Jefferson on this year’s nickel just sucks. The one on the 2005 nickels was much better; they should have just kept the buffalo nickel.
Does anyone know what’s going to be on the reverse of the quarter once the 50 states thing is over? Are they just going to revert back to the eagle?
Look, if I was going to change US currency, the VERY first thing I would do would be to change the colours.
Each denomination would be a different colour (like it is in most other civilised countries!), and the pictures of Presidents would have to go. Sorry, but they get plenty of Face Time as it is.
So, who would I put on the currency? An eclectic list, and controversial no doubt, but here we go:
$1- Stays as it is
$2- Martin Luther King, Jr
$5- John Wayne
$10- A suffragette
$20- Bender
$50- WWII Infantryman
$100- Stewie Griffin
$1,000- Dogbert
Australia’s currency gets major Kudos for having a 25lb Field Gun on the $100 note, and New Zealand’s currency is also very cool, having native wildlife on the notes…
To heck with Dogbert, how 'bout Wink Martindale?
Who?
Evidently you’re not a member of DNRC…
Here’s a better image of Madison on the $5000 dollar bill. I can’t imagine who would have carried one of these around.
I was gonna say… Yes America SHOULD have different colours! It makes sense, really it does. Each note has it’s own colour. Tourists will thank you, drunk people will thank you, people exchanging money in the dark will thank you. Seriously it makes life easier!
I remember EONS ago laughing at the Ozzies brightly coloured, plastic money…then we got our own brightly coloured plastic money. It just makes sense.
We have wildlife and (NZ) important people but more importantly each note is a different colour! Americans will never realise the wonder of this until all notes are not green.
Just for the record NZ notes all feature a “famous” NZer, a native bird and Her Majesty.
(for NZers, where did Cook go? What note is he on now?)