MNeagle
6th December 2010, 08:02 AM
Government can’t print money properly
http://l.yimg.com/lk/api/res/1.2/5n8N4JUZXpeTGloBqJo6ag--/YXBwaWQ9eW1lZGlhO2g9MjE1O3c9MzAw/http://mit.zenfs.com/102/2010/12/100-bills.jpg
As a metaphor for our troubled economic and financial era -- and the government's stumbling response -- this one's hard to beat: You can't stimulate the economy via the money supply, after all, if you aren't able to print the actual money correctly.
Because of a printing problem, the federal government has shut down production of its flashy new $100 bills, and has quarantined more than one billion of them -- more than ten percent of all existing U.S. cash -- in a vault in Fort Worth, Texas, reports CNBC.
"There is something drastically wrong here," one source said. "The frustration level is off the charts."
In announcing the new bills, officials with the Treasury and the Federal Reserve touted their sophisticated security features, including a 3-D security strip and a color-shifting image of a bell, designed to foil counterfeiters. The new design features debuted after more than a decade of research and development. But it turns out the bills are so high-tech that the printers tasked with producing them can't handle the job.
More than one billion unusable bills have been printed. Some of the bills creased during production, creating a blank space on the paper, according to one official. Because correctly printed bills are mixed in with the flawed ones, even the ones printed to the correct design specs can't be used until they 're sorted. It would take an estimated 20-30 years to weed out the defective bills by hand, so officials are working to develop a mechanized system that could get the job done in about a year.
Combined, the quarantined bills add up to $110 billion dollars -- more than ten percent of the entire U.S. cash supply, which now stands at around $930 billion.
The flawed bills -- which cost around $120 million to print -- will have to burned.
The new bills are the first to include Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's signature. In order to prevent a shortfall,the government has ordered production of the old design, which includes the signature of Bush administration Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. That, surely, is not the only respect in which the nation's lead economic officials would like to turn back the clock to sometime prior to the 2008 financial crisis.
(AP Photo of older $100 bills rolling off the presses/Doug Mills)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20101206/us_yblog_thelookout/government-cant-print-money-properly
http://l.yimg.com/lk/api/res/1.2/5n8N4JUZXpeTGloBqJo6ag--/YXBwaWQ9eW1lZGlhO2g9MjE1O3c9MzAw/http://mit.zenfs.com/102/2010/12/100-bills.jpg
As a metaphor for our troubled economic and financial era -- and the government's stumbling response -- this one's hard to beat: You can't stimulate the economy via the money supply, after all, if you aren't able to print the actual money correctly.
Because of a printing problem, the federal government has shut down production of its flashy new $100 bills, and has quarantined more than one billion of them -- more than ten percent of all existing U.S. cash -- in a vault in Fort Worth, Texas, reports CNBC.
"There is something drastically wrong here," one source said. "The frustration level is off the charts."
In announcing the new bills, officials with the Treasury and the Federal Reserve touted their sophisticated security features, including a 3-D security strip and a color-shifting image of a bell, designed to foil counterfeiters. The new design features debuted after more than a decade of research and development. But it turns out the bills are so high-tech that the printers tasked with producing them can't handle the job.
More than one billion unusable bills have been printed. Some of the bills creased during production, creating a blank space on the paper, according to one official. Because correctly printed bills are mixed in with the flawed ones, even the ones printed to the correct design specs can't be used until they 're sorted. It would take an estimated 20-30 years to weed out the defective bills by hand, so officials are working to develop a mechanized system that could get the job done in about a year.
Combined, the quarantined bills add up to $110 billion dollars -- more than ten percent of the entire U.S. cash supply, which now stands at around $930 billion.
The flawed bills -- which cost around $120 million to print -- will have to burned.
The new bills are the first to include Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's signature. In order to prevent a shortfall,the government has ordered production of the old design, which includes the signature of Bush administration Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. That, surely, is not the only respect in which the nation's lead economic officials would like to turn back the clock to sometime prior to the 2008 financial crisis.
(AP Photo of older $100 bills rolling off the presses/Doug Mills)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20101206/us_yblog_thelookout/government-cant-print-money-properly