Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Fed Misprints $110 Billion in New $100 notes

It was the "bill of the future". The new American $100 bill had 3D security ribbons and threads. Microprint text and watermark images were disguised across its surface. And the numbers changed color depending on the light and viewing angle. Lauded to the press in April, the bill was so sophisticated that no counterfeiter could hope to reliably print it.

The only problem, though, was that apparently the U.S. government couldn't reliably print it either. During the initial printing run, a flaw in the printing process was encountered, which led to a layer of the paper folding over after inking, revealing an uninked portion.

Approximately 30 percent of the the approximately $366B USD printed, or roughly $110B USD worth of bills, carry the flaw. That's a whopping 1.1 billion botched bills.

This is ironic since it's been the general belief that the US should raise the money supply, to keep inflation at a steady rate...and they misprint $110 billion of it in the process.

4 comments:

  1. Do these actually have to be reprinted? Since we know for sure that they are from the Fed, couldn't they just go into circulation anyways? What are the laws regarding flawed bills?

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  2. All the money will get recirculated through the fed eventually and i would suspect that they would replace them. Furthermore, counterfeiters have a way in now. They can produce bills and may potentially be able to make them look like the misprinted group.
    I doubt this will have an effect on the economy as its to small of an error to cause major damage. Way to go Fed!

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  3. I agree with Christian. This small amount will probably not have a big effect on the economy. Fed just has to be more careful in the future.

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  4. The link doesn't work for some reason but I read an article similar to that. This is not really about the law regarding the misprinted bills, but the Fed's mistake just cost itself a bit over a hundred million dollars printing these flawed bills. What a way to blow off money in such a bad timing. They will burn the misprinted money away eventually or maybe recycle the paper?That could save some money...

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