Tuesday, February 19, 2008

About the New $5 Bill

About the New $5 Bill

The new $5 bills will be safer, smarter and more secure: safer because they’re harder to fake and easier to check; smarter to stay ahead of savvy counterfeiters; and more secure to protect the integrity of U.S. currency. Because security features are difficult for counterfeiters to reproduce well, they often do not try, hoping that cash handlers and the public will not check their money.

The redesigned $5 bill retains two of the most important security features that were first introduced in the 1990s and are easy to check.

Watermark

[from Erica]

5 comments:

Angela Khai said...

I've always wondered that by publishing all the differences to the American public, wouldn't it make it easier for counterfeiters to counterfeit the new $5? Just a thought I had when I was reading this.

Saba Arastu said...

I think its interesting how much goes into making a simple dollar bill. After watching today's movie in class, I realized that our money is not as simple as it may look and after reading this blog I have come to see that we take money for granted very often as mentioned in the movie and it is if you look at it closely a work of art. Adding new features on the $5 bill to reduce counterfeiting just goes to show that money making literally is an art form in and of itself.

Anonymous said...

Wow. The new $5 bill actually looks kind of nice, but it also looks like toy money. But I guess every time we're introduced to a new version of a bill it looks like toy money for a while. It's good that more security measures are being taken to avoid counterfeiting but just because these new bills are going to be introduced doesn't meant that the old bills are going to be taken out of circulation. So, doesn't that still mean that people can just counterfeit the older bills and still get away with it?

-Jenny Lien

Anonymous said...

i think that it is good that the bill is becoming more complex but yet easy to check. most people do not know how to check bills. when you are being trained for a job in which you have to deal with cash and customers you are not trained what to look for in bills. this is a bad flaw in our retail system but maybe this new $5 bill will help correct this problem.

Raquel said...

I love the point professor Maurer brought up in class that counterfeit becomes counterfeit when one gets caught (of course, he said it much better). New or old bills, we'll still face the 'problem' of counterfeit even though value is determined by people, their belief, not by the bill itself. I recently read a quote that said "You believe money is power. Belief is power" which I think pretty much sums up my thoughts on this article.