HOME |
RSS | 
Artist Mark Wagner works extensively with money. You won’t be able to launder money with this broom, but you can sweep it around a bit.
The Bank of Canada will begin issuing new, plastic, $100 bills.
In a statement, the Bank of Canada said that the new notes will last twice as long as paper money and will also be recycled, which makes them generally greener… There are also two transparent windows on the note — one small one depicts a frosted maple leaf, the other extends the height of the bill, and has a copy of the portrait toward the top of the window, and an image of a building at the bottom. If you move the bill the colors of the building will change a lot, while the color changes on the portrait are more subtle.
The video highlights the relevant features , which were all created in an attempt to make the bills impossible to counterfeit. The degree to which they will be foldable, stackable, washable etc. remains to be determined.
Link.
Everything’s better deep fried, right? Butter, beer, lattes — everything! Especially money.
Alex, this is how I want to get paid from now on. Maybe dust it with a bit of powdered sugar while you’re at it.
Link -via That’s Nerdalicious!
Immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, US officials were worried about a Japanese invasion and occupation of those islands. One particular concern was the disposition of US currency in banks in Hawaii. They could not allow that money to fall into Japanese hands. So the military governor of Hawaii found a clever solution:
In January of 1942, the military governor of Hawaii (the territory was under the military’s control after the Pearl Harbor bombing) recalled most of the currency in the future state, with some allowances as to not pull all of the cash out of the islands’ economy. Five months later, bills like the one pictured — called “Hawaii overprint notes” — were issued. The theory was simple: if Hawaii fell into Japanese hands, these bills would no longer be legal tender in the United States. This contingency plan never came into play.
In total, over 65 million Hawaii overprint notes were created (totalling over $300 million), in four denominations — $1, $5, $10, and $20, with the $5 note pictured above the rarest of the quartet. On October 21, 1944, ten months before Victory over Japan Day, the required use of these bills ceased.
It’s a pity that they didn’t put Lincoln in a Hawaiian shirt. He always looked good in Hawaiian shirts.
Link | Image: Coins & Banknotes
Comments Off
Twenty
years ago, Brazil found itself in the grips of hyperinflation. Its inflation
rate hit 80% a month, and the country was in financial free fall.
Economists at the Catholic University in Rio came up with an unlikely - but ultimately successful - plan to rescue the country. And would you believe it, the plan calls for fake money:
Read the fascinating story over at NPR's Planet Money blog: Link - via Just UrbanismThe four friends set about explaining their idea. You have to slow down the creation of money, they explained. But, just as important, you have to stabilize people's faith in money itself. People have to be tricked into thinking money will hold its value.
The four economists wanted to create a new currency that was stable, dependable and trustworthy. The only catch: This currency would not be real. No coins, no bills. It was fake.
"We called it a Unit of Real Value — URV," Bacha says. "It was virtual; it didn't exist in fact."
Sea captain David O’Keefe spent 30 years on the islands of Yap in the western Pacific. In that time, he established a successful trading company, married two wives (with another waiting in America), introduced alcohol and firearms to the islanders, and gained a monopoly over the island’s currency of giant stones called fei. Fei was a rare commodity, as it was quarried and carved on the island of Palau, 250 miles from Yap.
The Yapese may have been using fei as early as 1400, though the stones were so difficult to quarry with shell tools and then transport that they remained very rare as late as 1840. [Price p.76; Berg pp.151-4; Gillilland p.3] Their existence was first detailed by one of O’Keefe’s predecessors, the German trader Alfred Tetens, who in 1865 traveled to Yap on a large ship ferrying “ten natives… who wished to return home with the big stones they had cut on Palau.” [Gillilland p.4] It’s clear from this that the Yapese were eager to find alternatives to transportation by canoe, and O’Keefe fulfilled this demand. By 1882, he had 400 Yapese quarrying fei on Palau—nearly 10 percent of the population. [Berg p.150]
This trade had its disadvantages, not least the introduction of inflation, caused by the sudden increase in the stock of money. But it made huge sense for O’Keefe. The Yapese, after all, supplied the necessary labor, both to quarry the stones and to harvest coconuts on Yap. O’Keefe’s expenses, in the days of sail, were minimal, just some supplies and the wages of his crewmen. In return, he reaped the benefits of thousands of man-hours of labor, building a trading company worth—estimates differ—anywhere from $500,000 to $9.5 million. [Evening Bulletin; Hezel]
Read O’Keefe’s story at Smithsonian’s Past Imperfect Blog. Link
(Image credit: Eric Guinther)
We’ve all seen the occasional origami made from dollar bills, but those have nothing on these 32 amazing artworks made from currencies around the world. Personally, I like the carved sculptures like the one in the top center of the photo montage above.
Comments Off 
Also featuring Abraham Lincoln as Frida Kahlo and Andrew Jackson as Ronald McDonald. James Charles has made some slight adjustments to US currency. These are on display at The Shooting Gallery in San Francisco, as well as at the link.
Link via Dude Craft | Gallery Website
You know when you were a kid and would absentmindedly doodle smiley faces on dollar bills? Well it seems now there is a whole artistic community of currency defacers out there. Maybe part of the national budget crisis arose from all the cash that has to be taken out of circulation because George Washington has been replaced with Darth Vader. However, these portraits would make Andy Warhol proud.
The newly redesigned US $100 bill is more colorful than any US currency you’ve seen. There a lot of new security features to impede counterfeiting, including a blue ribbon embedded in the front with a watermark, a color-shifting bell, raised printing, tiny printed words in tiny spots, and more. Note: actual bills will not have a “specimen” watermark as this picture has. Take a tour of the differences at NewMoney, a government website devoted to US currency. Link -via J-Walk Blog
For being supposedly intelligent life forms, human beings are incredibly disorganized. Weird Worm has an intriguing article on 5 fundamental concepts that we can’t hash out as a species. For example:
3. We Can’t Agree What Things Are Worth
In fact, we need a lot of stuff. And not just another box of Sham-Wows to use on the boat like that stroke-faced douche on the infomercial suggested or a new 3D television to go in the john. We have a lot of basic necessities that we have to acquire if we are to survive.
The problem is that supply, demand, economics and whatever other voodoo we sprinkle into the global financial system results in a really mind-bending brew. Currently, there are about 203 countries, depending whom you ask, as well as 32 dependencies. How many currencies are there? About 182. And that doesn’t even count the confederate money your racist uncle left you in his will.
We do need money. Nobody is going to haul a dozen eggs from their coop every time they need a pack of double A’s from the trading post. And while it would be nice if the cash in your pocket didn’t have the potential to be suddenly worthless, the truth is we’re probably too stubborn about being jerks to each other for a simple, inflation free currency to exist any time soon. Plus it’s kind of bummer for the poor nations to realize that a guy pushing papers in Omaha really did make more in a day than they do in a year.
Plus, with the increased digitization of our currencies, the differences matter less for the rich nations. Most first world citizens can walk into any industrialized country, swipe some plastic and walk out with their goods and services without touching a red cent. Or silver rupee. Or brown coconut. Or whatever people are bartering with these days.
Once, the United States issued $5,000, $10,000, and even $100,000 bills. Why on earth would someone carry bills that big, especially back when they were really worth something?
Believe it or not, it wasn’t just to save space in fatcats’ wallets. When the Treasury started printing these giant bills, their main purpose was making transfer payments between banks and other financial institutions. Before sophisticated wire transfer systems were fully developed, it was apparently easier and safer just to fork over a $5,000 bill to settle up with a fellow bank. Once transfer technology became safer and more secure, there really wasn’t much need for the big bills anymore.
Mental_floss has the story on when and why such large bills were issued, what they looked like, and why they aren’t in circulation anymore. Link
Economic activity inside North Korea has reportedly ground to a halt following a government announcement that it is devaluing its currency at a rate of 100:1.
There were reports of public outrage and confusion after the announcement of the measure, which requires North Koreans to swap existing won notes for new ones at an exchange rate of one to 100 — effectively knocking two zeroes off their value. Because of a cap of 100,000 won per family (£475 at the official exchange rate), anyone with significant holdings of cash will have their savings wiped out.
The move is seen as an effort to quash small businesses and private enterprises which have proliferated in the unofficial economy. As many as 30,000 vendors are believed to operate in a market outside the capital, Pyongyang, and many of them had accumulated substantial cash reserves. This move effectively confiscates that cash.
Analysts do not foresee any direct economic repercussions outside the country, but it does serve as a reminder that many other world currencies are, like the North Korean won, “fiat money”
Links at the Times Online, Wall Street Journal, and Economist. Photo credit.
Millions of US coins and bills are exchanged daily and billions of them are in circulation. Visual Economics put together a great graphic to compare the values and number of currency in circulation, and even looked at how long each stays in circulation.
Would you have guessed there are almost 6 times as many $100 bills in circulation as there are $20 given that most ATMs use only $20s? Would you have guessed the $5 bill has the shortest life expectency of any bill, or that there are 4 times as many pennies than any other coin?
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by OddNumber.
Every now and then, there are calls for an international currency to diversify the current global currency system that is dominated by the US dollar. The current economic crisis has got Russia and China pushing for the concept, which was discussed at the G8 summit in Italy:
The Russian leader proudly displayed the coin, which bears the English words "United Future World Currency", to journalists after the summit wrapped up in the quake-hit Italian town of L’Aquila.
Medvedev said that although the coin, which resembled a euro and featured the image of five leaves, was just a gift given to leaders it showed that people were beginning to think seriously about a new global currency.
"In all likelihood something similar could appear and it could be held in your hand and used as a means of payment," he told reporters. "This is the international currency."
Link (Photo: Alexander Nemenov, AFP/Getty Images)
Do you think it’s a good idea to have a global currency? Why or why not?
Is this the beginning of the end of the dominance of the US dollar as the world’s preferred currency? The global economic crisis and the erosion in the value of the dollar has led China of all countries to call for a new "international reserve currency":
[People's Bank of China] Gov. Zhou Xiaochuan’s essay did not mention the dollar by name but said the crisis showed the dangers of relying on one nation’s currency for international payments. In an unusual step, the essay was published in both Chinese and English, making clear it was meant for an international audience.
"The crisis called again for creative reform of the existing international monetary system towards an international reserve currency," Zhou wrote.
A reserve currency is the unit in which a government holds its reserves. But Zhou said the proposed new currency also should be used for trade, investment, pricing commodities and corporate bookkeeping.
Beijing has long been uneasy about relying on the dollar for the bulk of its trade and to store foreign reserves. Premier Wen Jiabao publicly appealed to Washington this month to avoid any steps in response to the crisis that might erode the value of the dollar and Beijing’s estimated $1 trillion holdings in treasuries and other U.S. government debt.
Link (Photo: World Economic Forum [Flickr])
