I’m picturing an army of bureaucrats at the Treasury Department, all waiting on the decisions of a smaller collection of old, cranky, conservative banker-types before they can do anything. Kind of like a slimy wad of used condoms clogging up a sewer line.
They say it’ll be 2030 before they can change anything, and they’re making all these weird compromises. Why, I don’t know. I think it’s all because Rich Uncle Pennybags is a colossal douche.
Does the US treasury have a specific and known procedure for changing the characters on its money then, or is it just done by ad-hoc committees?
In the UK we have a specific protocol for doing this, involving consultations and gathered pools of nominees and the input of cultural experts. As outlined here on the Bank of England’s website:
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/Pages/characters/selection.aspx
In case anyone’s missed it, the Hamilton cast recording is free to listen on Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUSRfoOcUe4avCXPg6tPgdZzu–hBXUYx
It’s information-dense, and I found it very entertaining.
I reacted to Trump objecting to replacing Jackshit with Tubman, proposing the invention of a new denomination, “maybe a 2 dollar bill. ??” [to quote his facial question marks, not my typography]
Seemingly unaware that a $2 already exists, and is emblazoned with the writer of the DOI, Mr. Jefferson. Between Jefferson and Jackshit, it seems the latter is much more appropriate to be replaced. Jeffson wsn’t perfect by any means, but…
me thinks POTUS should already be aware of all the legal denominations the Admin’s Treasury Dept. produces. especially someone who likes to roll in BILLIONS of them.
@cartomancer #1:
“The Bank will not represent fictional or living characters on its notes, with the exception of the Monarch.”
What? The Queen is fictional? I knew it!
That explains so much.
I assume that most of the time the only public citizens the SecTreas hears from concerning money designs are a few fourth-graders and a certain tiny cohort of retired people – the same people who write multiple letters to the editor of the local newspaper, and who are still angry that cars don’t come with cigarette lighters as standard equipment anymore. Given that, I think the Treasury’s response on this has been much less unfocused and chaotic than I expected, and not nearly as bad as many of the responses we get out of the federal government.
cartomancer — The current portraits were selected in 1928, so the procedure is to not change them. Similar to the UK system, they can not show living people. They can use any “deceased persons whose places in history the American people know well.” There have been two non-presidents: Benjamin Franklyn ($100) and Samuel P. Chase ($10,000 bill no longer in circulation). Other than an act of Congress, design decisions are made by the Secretary of Treasury. They had a committee work on the anti-counterfeit redesign that began in 1996.
I assume you were excluding Hamilton because he’s already mentioned in the post.
The US paper money, other than the pesky “In God We Trust” has only changed significantly over the years to add security features. This is the first change of the person in the portrait for what appears to be 75 years, based on the history of the currency.
Why not make multiple forms of the fucking money? You know, like the way they did quarters that have different state pictures on the back?
They could have 50 different $20 bills with brilliant and interesting non-genocidal non-racist non-douchebag portraits on the back.
And they could have lots of different $1 bills and put all the douchebags’ portraits on them. Why not? Then they could call the $1 an “asswipe” As in “hey my asswipe has George Bush on it!”
So when are they adding tactile features? Are they still making excuses?
It’s easy to make changes to the coins. As long as the size and weight remain constant, all the slot machines will correctly read the coin. The optical readers for the paper money are a bit more problematic. Too many differences between circulating money and/or dirt/grease/oil on the paper can make it harder to correctly read real money, and detect counterfeits. So going slow isn’t necessarily bad.
Are all your banknotes still the same size? Bloody inconvenient for blind people, that. Most other countries manage that better.
Nerd@#11:
The optical recognition systems have been skating on “barely adequate” for long enough. They should improve.
Cartomancer: No, there’s no standard system for deciding who goes on a US bill. I’m not sure whether it’s ‘this is why’ or ‘this is because’ none of our bills have been redesigned to feature a new person since *1928*. Doubtless some combination.
US currency: Suuuuuuper conservatively designed.
When are they going to take off the “In God We Trust” thing? I’ve given up on covering it with marker. Or do we all trust God and I just missed the memo?
not disputing the optical system comment, just questioning, why they need to look at the portrait, aren’t there enough distinguishing features on the rest of the bill? IDK, JAQ
From the whacko rightwing view of the Harriet Tubman change to the $20 bill:
That’s Don Feder speaking. He is a spokesman for the World Congress of Families and a member of the board of advisers of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
Link
Re: Lynna’s quote (#17)
That’s almost cute if it wasn’t for the sincerity. It sounds like a kid playing an elaborate game of make-believe. Let’s pretend the president has been replaced by an evil cyborg bent on selling our kidney so he can buy the button cells he so desperately needs to live.*
Decoder: enabled
+++
‘World Congress’: 3 Member organisation located in Sticks, Backwood County, Nowhere
‘Families’: Hates people, especially women, anti-choice, strives to remove any social services or support for low-income households, despises LGBT
Federation for American Immigration Reform: Also hates non-whites. Warning: Misleading acronym detected. Avoid!
+++
Did I guess right? It’s quite easy to identify the horrible organisations with words like ‘family’ and ‘freedom’, but harder to spot the influential ones.
*Engineers designed the kill-bot to use only button cells so he would depend on his masters to keep him supplied. It wasn’t enough, but they only realised this when Higgin’s body – sans kidneys – was found in the broom closet.
You’re all so democratic.
Here in Australia, we just got told there was a currency redesign. Most people had no idea it was coming. Basically, it’s “we added a clear bit and some ugly damn oversize wattle design. Learn to like it.”
Here’s pictures: http://banknotes.rba.gov.au/australias-banknotes/next-generation-banknotes-program/
The good thing is that they are adding tactile recognition.
Government doing what it does best: Take something simple and complicate it. As opposed to…
“Andrew Jackson was a world-class asshole. If there is one person on money who SHOULDN’T be there, it is him. Alexander Hamilton was the reason why we have a viable currency and don’t have to barter chickens for a gallon of whale oil. If there is one person on money who SHOULD be there, it is him. Hey, I know! Lets leave Hamilton and replace Jackson with a deserving woman!”
See how simple that was, federal government? And for those cynics out there, the real reason we had to deal with this nonsense is because the $10 bill was the next to be redesigned, with a new look due to be unveiled in 2016… in other words, the only new bill to be unveiled while Obama was still in office. Thus the reason why a woman was not originally scheduled to replace Jackson was so that Obama could have another feather to stick in his “legacy” cap. Which has become sadly emblematic of his presidency… government by checklist rather than actual changes or problem solving.
Shit! Don’t give them any ideas!
Otherwise, all will be replaced with Rich Uncle Pennybags.
Sen. Jim Webb doesn’t like all this displacing Indian Killer Jackson: A love letter to bigotry.
There are security reasons (as the hovertext explains) regarding the schedule for redesigns of the paper currency. That doesn’t mean there can’t be some adjustment, but the schedule isn’t arbitrary.
As for why they are having such a hard time understanding the reason for replacing Jackson with Tubman, that’s hard to explain.
I just want to know what is it about tens that make them so rare. Whenever I pay for something less than $10 with a twenty, I get two fives rather than a ten as change.
rrhain,
I think tens are rare because they serve a limited purpose.
The $20 became the “standard” bill issued by ATMs, so they’ve become plentiful — consumers have them because they got them from the ATM, and merchants have them because they got them from consumers. With the $20 as the standard bill, tens just aren’t that useful — you mostly don’t need more than one of them to make change, and you can do fine without any as long as you have a decent supply of fives.
I’ll agree with Screechmonky#24, ATMs and self-checkout stations have something to do with it. It is easier to design these if you only use a limited number of denominations. I get two fives instead of a ten in change when I use the self-scan station at the supermarket.
rrhain, one standard used in physical security is the random application of an additional physical security measure. That can stumble up an adversary who has figured out the standard scheduled changes in physical security measures.
Having a scheduled guard rotation is all well and good, the adversary knows the patrol schedule.
We barely use the ten in Canada either. The ATM giveth twenties, the cashier taketh them away and returns fives and change. Unless someone gave them a ten, which occasionally happens.
Use the serial number on the notes as an algorithm key that identifies several fixed visual features in the note image. Then have two of each denomination, one with a male image and one with a female image. Give each note a braille section in the bottom left and top right corner designating the value. There, all catered for.
@26, wzrd1: And if we didn’t already announce to the world the schedule and even what security enhancements we’re adding, that might be a thing. Unless we’re going to say the schedule is completely worthless (and I don’t think that’s the case since security measures get put into one bill and then get moved onto the others so you don’t want them being phased in randomly such that, say, the 10 gets the next enhancement, then the 50, then the 10 gets another one, then the 5, then the 20, then the 50 gets another enhancement, etc. You want them all to get the enhancements.)
But as for the ten, it’s only rare because people have decided it will be. If the cashier doesn’t have any tens, then there aren’t any to give out. But why was the cashier given a dearth of tens? I can understand if the typical amount is between $10 and $20, thus making the $5 a common denomination to give as change. But I have seen cashiers who have tens in their drawer not give them out but instead give two fives.
Maybe that’s the reason: Inflation has made it such that you’re more likely to get a total that has a five as the largest bill in change so it’s just an artifact of the system. That would lead to an increase in fives in the till. But, that still doesn’t explain why the tens don’t get given out when they do exist.
rrhain, so we’ve rolled out every enhancement on the $1.00 bill as we’ve rolled out for the $100, $50 and $20 bill at the same time, recalling all other bills to ensure full monetary safety?
Nope, we replace and enhance security by attrition, incrementally and actually, rather haphazardly.
I still remember our previous attempt at re-configuring the currency system. One problem was it was a very complex reconfiguration hat also involved coinage.
1 – eliminate $1 bill,
2 – introduce $1 coin
3 – introduce $2 bill.
4 – eliminate penny
the result would not affect cash registers, put $2 in $1 slot, put $1 coins in penny pocket. Simply adjust prices to nearest nickel, stop the ~~.99 nonsense and settle on ~~.95. *
so, we did steps 2 and 3, but stumbled at 1 and 4. They also made it more confusing by deliberately choosing the dollar coin to be the exact same size as the quarter (only in a goldish shade). I still advocate the complete process 1-4 in total, yet plastic has essentially supplanted the paper cash system.
Can even use plastic and avoid the risk of credit disaster by using debit cards as a pseudo “credit card”.[quotes are deliberate, not scare quotes].
—
* – Hong Kong currency demonstrates that a nickel increment is perfectly usable; as HK does not implement a penny for HK$.
Why stop there? While we’re disadvantaging the poor and elderly, who do literally count their very pennies, minimum price for anything whatsoever is $1000. That’ll be $2500 for a gallon of milk, $3500 for a loaf of bread.
Since we’re pricing things away from the poor, let’s totally screw them to death and have our revolution early.
@wzrd1 #32:
How does eliminating the penny disenfranchise the poor? Yes they count every penny, but most truly poor I know use a debit card and EBT card (which is a debit card). They also use cash. If they had no pennies to count, they would count nickels. Prices would not, in actuality, change. Any place that has eliminated the smallest part of currency, the US included, did not cause prices to go up. Inflation does that automatically, whether you have worthless coins or not.
I work for the bureau of engraving and printing, and I’m (obviously) only speaking as a person who reads this blog, nothing more.
PZ: the reason for the timeframe is that the design process is long. Imagine how long you would think and triple it. And before you bemoan government bureaucracy, keep in mind the steps top a totally new banknote.
First, the general design has to be approved from any number of potentials. This is a big deal for obvious reasons. One the design is set, it goes to the engravers who make some prototype master plates by hand. However, the intaglio process is tricky, so there’s a long period spent fine tuning the depth of the cuts to ensure the right amount of ink gets transferred.
Then it goes to security features. They put in any of the secret squirrel stuff for anti counterfeiting. Then those are prototyped and tested again.
Next it goes to the BEMs, banknote equipment manufacturers. They’re the ones who make atms, change machines, soda machines, etc. They have to design their algorithms to detect the new note, and then we help them with testing its efficacy.
Years to do all this, not weeks nor months. So slow down with the critique.
Re: texture feature: my group is the one working on it. It’s not straightforward nor easy. Suffice it to say we are working on methods, but it’s putting plastic (or something) on paper, which is tough to get it to stay for 4.8 years. It’s a work in progress, but we’re diligently working on it.
Sorry for the wall of words.
Tl;dr: it’s a slow process to design something from scratch.
On the shortage of $10s. I was a retail manager, and we only started the day with $100 in the register, so we were limited to how many bills we had in the drawer. If you have two $5 bills in your drawer, you can make change for a $3 purchase made with a $10 bill, but if you have one $10 bill and no $5 bills, you would be forced to give $7 in ones, and then you’ll run out of ones. The $5 is more versatile.
The US Dollar is the defacto currency of the world. That means that there are people and institutions all over the world that need to adjust to the new bills.
In addition, all sorts of machines (ATMs, vending machines, counterfeit detection machines, etc) need to be able to handle the new notes.
That the changes will take time should not be controversial. And that the Treasury cannot change the schedule is not controversial either.
What is controversial is that Andrew Jackson is being retained. That seems to make no sense to me.
wut?
@titolasvegas, my wife has submitted a few designs over the years, none won, but we did know one man who did have a winning portrait design. PIA process, long, involved in every particular indeed. That said, one can go out of sequence for political reasons, it’s been done before.
@chigau, in some very real ways, the dollar is an important benchmark and for several nations, the official currency of those nations. One reason is, where is the great oil bank located again?
@37 – The vast majority of international transactions are conducted in USDs. USDs are also the reserve currency of choice for most countries in the world.
That being said, you are right that my attempt to use the shorthand “de facto currency” is actually misleading.
methuseus wrote:
Canada eliminated the penny in 2012, and we didn’t even bother to change the prices. Even today, our prices are still set like 499.99 or 19.97. The price is simply rounded up or down at the till if paying in cash, or charged to the penny if paying by debit or credit card.
VP wrote:
Much of the world may operate with U.S. dollars, but few of them trade in the actual paper bills. Even that is starting to come to an end as political instability in the U.S. makes the dollar a volatile reserve currency.
@ck, then, there are those who use the US dollar as their official currency. You ignore those.
Such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecuador#Currency