$930 Billion in Quarantined $100 Bills to be Burned, Don't Worry Real Cost is Only $120 Million; Security Measures "Too Difficult to Print"

In an effort to thwart counterfeiting, the US Government has implemented a $100 bill design so difficult to print even the U.S. Treasury cannot print them.

The government needs to burn $930 billion in flawed $100 bills, more than 10% of all existing cash. The cost of printing the flawed bills was a mere $120 million.

Please consider Government can’t print money properly

Because of a problem with the presses, the federal government has shut down production of its flashy new $100 bills, and has quarantined more than 1 billion of them -- more than 10 percent of all existing U.S. cash -- in a vault in Fort Worth, Texas, reports CNBC.

Officials with the Treasury and the Federal Reserve had touted the new bills' sophisticated security features that were 10 years in the making, including a 3-D security strip and a color-shifting image of a bell, designed to foil counterfeiters. But it turns out the bills are so high-tech that the presses can't handle the printing job.

It would take an estimated 20 to 30 years to weed out the defective bills by hand, but a mechanized system is expected to get the job done in about a year.

Combined, the quarantined bills add up to $110 billion -- more than 10 percent of the entire U.S. cash supply, which now stands at around $930 billion.

The flawed bills, which cost around $120 million to print, will have to burned.

The new bills are the first to include Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's signature. In order to prevent a shortfall, the government has ordered production of the old design, which includes the signature of Bush administration Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

To point out the obvious: you can't print gold and gold coins are relatively easy to check for purity.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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