Funny Money

As loyal, red-blooded Americans, it's our civic duty to be preoccupied with money. How to get it, how to save it, how to keep the federal government from taking all of it, and how to justify our spending so much of it on lame Hollywood sequels. Or more correctly, on the buckets of popcorn we eat while watching them, a product which, incidentally, has the highest profit margin this side of an Iraqi reconstruction contract.

That's why it's important to know that the Treasury Department (motto: "Spend as many as you like, we'll print more.") is messing with the look of our money again. They're starting with the $20 note, taking Andrew Jackson out of his oval border and making him larger so people realize it's not country singer Alan Jackson, adding a flock of yellow number 20s flying around the White House on the back like so many jaundiced seagulls, and changing the background color of the front so it fades from pastel green to peach to blue. Martha Stewart's going to love it. Not that there was any doubt she loved money before.

The last changes they made to our money were major. Starting in 1996 they redesigned the paper money, transforming its 67-year-old staid look into something that wouldn't be out of place in a Monopoly set. Apparently the problem was technology -- the old bills were getting too easy to counterfeit. One day someone in the Treasury Department woke up and realized that anyone who had watched Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible and had a broken spatula, a piece from a Lego set, some kite string, and a friend who was a government engraver could duplicate one in minutes. This had to be stopped.

They incorporated a number of security changes, all of which they're keeping in the new bills. First, there's the microprinting, which means there are be lots of teeny-tiny words buried in Jackson's shirt collar and the border like a cheap Hirschfeld imitation. What Nina has to do with Andrew Jackson is beyond me, but at least it will give us something fun to do -- "Find the hidden words on the new $20 bill and win big prizes!" -- while standing in line at the bank waiting to be charged for not using the ATM.

Then there's the thread which is embedded in the paper to the right of the portrait. When you hold the bill up to a bright light the words "USA TWENTY" and a flag appear on the thread; when held under an ultraviolet light the thread glows green. This is how you can tell the denomination of the bill -- the thread on the hundred glows red. Well, that and those big numbers printed in the corners.

This is part of the government's plan to not only help the struggling black light industry, a group which still has warehouses full of old Jimi Hendrix posters they want to get rid of, but also to take kids off the street and into their bedroom where they can check out the new bills under a black light while saying "Awesome!" and "Phat!" and "I can't remember, did I lift this fifty from Mom or Dad?" In case that's not enough to keep them so busy they won't have time to wonder whether SpongeBob SquarePants' name is a malapropism or a spoonerism, there's the color-shifting ink on the number in the lower right-hand corner which looks copper when you see it straight on, but from an angle appears green. How fun! Mood money.

The new $20 notes will start circulating in November, followed by similar changes in the other bills. All except the $1 and $2 notes. They won't be changing, partly because they're not worth counterfeiting, but mostly because the government is talking about eliminating the dollar bill completely and replacing it with a coin. They say this simple move would save $100 million over the first five years. That's because it costs 3.7 cents to print a $1 bill that lasts for 18 months, while a coin, on the other hand, would cost 8 cents and last 30 years.