Craig Karmin, author of \"Biography of the Dollar: How the Mighty Buck Conquered the World and Why It’s Under Siege,\" offers 10 facts you never knew about the currency you use every day.";
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The world’s most valuable paper is made from something almost as all-American as the dollar itself – blue jeans.
Crane & Co., the Dalton, Mass., company that has been providing paper for U.S. banknotes since the days of Paul Revere, makes sheets of a cotton-linen blend for today’s dollar. Much of the cotton comes from tons of scraps of discarded denim. Crane removes the natural waxes and oils, then bleaches the cotton white. ";
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The U.S. Secret Service believes that the most authentic-looking counterfeit dollars ever made came from North Korea. These phony one-hundred dollar bills, dubbed Supernotes, are of such high quality than even experts have trouble distinguishing them.
In fact, some details on Supernotes even appear to be superior in quality to the real thing. The clock tower hands on Independence Hall, for example, looked sharper on some of the seized counterfeit notes than on real $100 bills.";
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In 2000, with inflation soaring and its own currency in shambles, Ecuador decided to destroy all its sucres and use only the U.S. dollar as a paper currency. The country undertook a massive shredding ritual of all its 50,000-sucre notes, each worth about $2 then, to permanently retire the old currency.
Meanwhile, charted flights from Miami landed in Ecuador with more than $100 million in bills from U.S. banks. ";
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In 1971, President Nixon made the historic decision to take the greenback off the gold standard. That meant, for the first time in the 2,500 years that people have used international currencies, the world would depend on one not be backed by gold, silver, or another tangible collateral.
Despite the enormity of this move, Nixon was hesitant to pre-empt the news during the showing of the popular western TV show \"Bonanza\" for fearing of alienating its many fans.";
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The Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the government money factory that prints dollars, says there has never been an outside heist attempt. But there have been a few cases where insiders tried to make off with freshly printed bills before the BEP could release them to banks.
The most infamous bandit was Robert Schmitt Jr., a BEP engineer who was charged in 1994 with stealing $1.7 million in freshly-minted $100 bills that he smuggled out in a secret compartment in his briefcase. ";
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While today’s biggest counterfeit threats come from abroad, during the wild period in the mid-19th century known as the Free Banking Era, domestic counterfeiting was rampant.
With more than 700 state banks printing thousands of different bills with their own design and eccentricities, it was no wonder the average citizen had trouble determining which ones were real. Banks adorned their currencies with everything from beauty pageant contestants to Santa Claus.";
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The U.S. may be the only country that will accept any of its destroyed currency and refund the owner for the full amount, as long as 51 percent of the bill remains and is determined to be genuine.
True story: One man’s enraged wife once ran most of his life savings through a shredder, destroying the bills. He mailed the green strips to the Mutilated Currency Division at the BEP, where a specialist spent two months piecing the strips together like a jigsaw puzzle. The division sent the man a check for $30,000.";
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While the BEP develops designs for new currency, it’s the privilege of the U.S. Treasury Secretary to approve the bill’s new look. Few treasury secretaries have indulged in this power.
But Robert Rubin, who held the post from 1995 to 1999, was an exception. He was known to send the BEP back to the drawing board if he found a feature on a newly proposed bill displeasing, even if that meant waiting a few more months until the bills could be sent out to the public. ";
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Eastern Europeans hoarded dollars throughout the Cold War because the greenback was the primary currency of the black market.
Yet for years after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, some in the former Eastern Bloc continued to stuff dollars underneath their mattresses, even though their own currencies had become convertible, and most black market goods were now readily available in their own stores. ";
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The dollar’s cotton-linen blend is considered perhaps the most rugged of all currencies. The BEP says the fibers are so strong that you could fold a bill on the same crease up to 4,000 times before it would tear.
What happens to bills when they finally do die? The Federal Reserve shreds and compresses them into small bricks. They are then usually sent to landfill, or packaged as souvenirs."; // END editorial data