Comment by forgottenpass | Hacker News Reader

Comment by forgottenpass | Hacker News Reader

"It's a sign of the times," Rudd said.

It's a sign that the States doesn't keep up with the times. We should have ditched Crane's cloth for polymer banknotes ages ago.

In general our currency reflects a stuffy and uptight attitude. Canada seems like a guy that says "fuck it, we're doing birds for 15 years"[0] or "How about Hockey, eh?"[1]. They've put the CanadaArm on the $10 [2], we've been to the fucking moon and only have the Eisenhower dollar where there is some moon [3], but not without that damn eagle, again. Instead we get "in god we trust," pictures of buildings and the only hint of changing anything more than shuffling the layout is occasional rumblings to put St. Reagan on a bill.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknotes_of_the_Canadian_dolla... [1] http://www.cdnpapermoney.com/images/Journey/2002_005b.jpg [2] http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8542/8694157272_a1323d9017_o.j... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1974S_Eisenhower_Reverse.j...

No, the choice to use natural fibers is a deliberate defense against counterfeiters. Forgive me for pasting such a large portion of the Esquire article cited in another comment:

"In the late 1980s, a new counterfeit hundred, the most perfect counterfeit yet made, began appearing in circulation. It looked identical to the real thing, betrayed visually, at least, under only the most rigorous forensic testing. (Some minor flaws were visible after enormous copies of the bills were made, but these were probably purposeful. Its makers didn't want to be suckered by their own handiwork.) Although the counterfeit came to America mostly on boats from gangs in China, it was eventually traced to North Korea, where it was believed to have been manufactured by the North Korean government on its own presses. Since then, new generations of the same counterfeit have appeared, including a big-head version, mimicking the redesigned hundred that entered circulation in 1996. This family of bogus notes has been given its own title, one that befits its almost mythical stature: the North Korean supernote.

Some stories about the supernote sound more like legend than fact — like its being laundered by a bank in Macao called the Banco Delta Asia, or several thousand of them somehow appearing overnight in Lima, threatening to tip over the entire Peruvian economy. But there remains one truth in the supernote's history that has never been forgotten: It was first detected at the Central Bank of the Philippines by a teller, given pause only by the same nebulous flaw that betrays the majority of counterfeits. It just didn't feel right."

We don't have the choice. The Federal Reserve controls the production and distribution of Federal Reserve Notes, as a privately-owned pseudocontractor to the U.S. Government.

If we wanted polymer notes, they would have to be United States Notes, to be issued by the U.S. Treasury. These have not even existed since 1996.

Polymer banknotes are not necessarily better. I find the new Canadian bills to be much harder to count, since they are so slippery. Also there have been reports of them melting in the heat and breaking in the cold.

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