Question
1: Ben, we've had other currency re-designed before but why is
this roll-out of the new $20 bill-printed at the Bureau
of Engraving & Printing's facility in Fort Worth such a big
deal?
Answer
1: This re-design is
creating a big stir because the newly designed $20 is such a departure from
the re-designed $5 and $10 bills that have eased into circulation over the
last few years.
The
government's spent alotta time and effort on this new breed of greenback.
What's got folks whipped into a frenzy is the radical new look-the coloring as
you can see is a real departure from the mundane green-and-black money we're
so accustomed to. The new $20s
still have the familiar green/black base coloring, but they've
decided to get really wild at the Bureau of Engraving & Printing and
really super-charged the new $20s with splashes of peach and blue...the first
time colors outside of the green-and-black scheme have graced our money since
1905.
Question
2: But the main reason they've done this is to foil
counterfeiters, right?
Answer
2: You betcha. Today's counterfeiters
have such accessible forgery tools available to them-from really powerful
but incredibly affordable computers that any of us can buy at our local
computer retailers to dirt cheap printers that can knock off a good enough
copy of today's currency to fool alotta folks that should know better.
In
fact, according to the Secret Service, only 1 in every 10,000 bills of all
denominations is a fake...but apparently the bad guys are gaining as
technology becomes more sophisticated. In
1995, digitally produced bills accounted for only 1% of counterfeit bills but
last year that figure reached 40%--including some
bogus bills printed on printers in college dorms to pay pizza delivery men.
So in order to stay ahead of
counterfeiters, the Treasury plans to make changes to the currency every 7 to
10 years. That may seem like a lot of effort to guard something that most
Americans use less and less each year.
Question
3: Okay Ben, what are some of the changes we'll immediately
notice that will make it harder for the bad guys to print bogus bills?
Answer:
Aside from the obvious new look of the bill, from the different
portrait-positioning of Andrew Jackson as well as the added color, and have
made some
subtle changes, such as:
1.
A re-designed watermark, a "security thread" that runs vertically up
one side of the note;
2.
They're using "color-shifting ink" that, when you hold the bill a
certain way, appears to change color from copper to green;
3.
They're micro-printing the words "TWENTY USA" so small it's
virtually impossible to knock off;
4.
They're now going to have the serial number of the bill printed twice on the
front of the new bills
Question
4: The government's come under fire in some of the talk radio
discussion about the new currency because of the amount of money they're
spending to promote the fact that there's new money about to be released into
circulation. How much are
they spending on this campaign...and what do you think?
Answer
4: The
Bureau of Engraving and Printing's spending $33 million on advertising,
marketing and education programs to promote the new bill, and has
hired a PR firm as well as a product
placement firm-you know: When you see an actor drinking a
can of Coke
on a TV show or using an Apple
laptop computer in a movie, those scenes aren't there by
accident, they've been paid for and placed there by companies like the one the
Government's hired. Oh
yeah: Some of those $33 million has been spent with one
of Hollywood's top talent agencies to put the $20 bill on the publicity
circuit, too.
Question
5: Do you think this sort of spending is reasonable?
Answer
5: Yeah, I do. Frankly,
it's a damned if you do/damned if you don't dilemma for the Bureau of
Engraving & Printing. At the end of the day, it makes more sense to spend
the dough to publicize the new dough-especially when it comes to heading any
fears overseas about the new money off at the pass.
Think about it: You don't wanna go on vacation and have a wad of cash
in your pocket that no one will accept. It's
a necessary evil I'm afraid.
Question
6: But speaking of evil, I saw an advance copy of your column
that will appear in the Texas
Living section of this Thursday's edition of The Dallas Morning News,
and you point out that the conspiracy
theorists are going to have a hay-day with the new $20
bills. How so?
Answer
7: It's been rumored for years that the Government has been
plotting to change the look and color of the currency in order to boost the
real "book" value of our nation by eliminating billions of
unreported-and-offshore dollars.
Question
8: How so?
Answer
8: Here's how this conspiracy tale
unfolds: The Feds would suddenly announce that-beginning on a
specific date-all of the old currency would no longer have value/be accepted
as legal tender...only the "new" currency would be accepted. (There
is precedent for this I might add: The military did this on a regular basis in
the past, declaring the wartime "script"
(their form of currency used during foreign military operations) as expired
after a certain date and time in order to foil enemy counterfeiters.) So how
would this same strategy increase the value of our money? Easy.
The stashes of cash that fuel the "underground economy" derived from
the drug
trade, gambling, prostitution and other well-documented organized-crime
enterprises showcased on shows like HBO's "The Sopranos"
would be forced to the surface. Suddenly those vaults of tax-free and
illegally-earned dollars would have to either quickly push back into the
system to be converted into the new, freely-spendable cash, or they'd be lost.
And
there have been rumored Government-funded studies over the years that this
strategy would cause billions of dollars to disappear from circulation-thus
increasing the actual "book" value of the U.S. treasury. In this
post-9/11, Patriot Act world-with far less offshore banking/bank secrecy
protection-theories abound that assorted U.S. Government agencies, from the
IRS to the FBI, Secret Service and now, Homeland Security, would all come back
with thousands of "scalps"-in the form of organized crime runners,
money-launderers and the Holy Grail of the 21st century-terrorists.
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