The NextGen Benjamins Fiasco
It’s been nearly three years since the captains of the Federal Reserve, U.S. Treasury, U.S. Secret Service and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing gathered with bankers, journalists and financial security types in the Cash Room at the U.S. Treasury building to unveil the new $100 banknote. The event — pageant, really — received obliging media coverage, but wasn’t exactly page-one material.
“Individuals, businesses and governments around the world put their confidence in our currency,” said then-secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner. “They use the dollar because they know that it is backed by the most sophisticated anticounterfeiting technologies known to men, that the design can’t be stolen or replicated.”
Geithner was dutifully shoveling it. Making money always has been, and always will be, an endless arms race. Completely outsmarting counterfeiters, like terrorists, is impossible. The security wizardry moves an inch, and counterfeiting soon follows, and on and on. “You know, we just can’t rest,” said Douglas Crane, the vice president of Crane & Co., in a radio interview a few years ago. The Massachusetts-based firm is the Bureau of Engraving and Printing’s sole supplier of the souped-up paper used to make our cash supply. Pressure from counterfeiters is great for Crane’s business.
