I got my first new twenty from an ATM last night. My first thought was boy, this thing is busy. It's like a three-ring circus compared to the old twenty, especially the old old twenty. There are multiple colors, water marks, embedded strips, shiny color-changing digits, colored threads, and the swarm of tiny "20"s mentioned in the quote. It reminds me of a fast-edit MTV blipvert, or an audacious late-70's Camaro with all the scoops and spoilers and graphics.
Actually, now that I think about it, the old bills had a lot of details, too. They were just of a different sort. The detail was in the cross-hatching the thousands of tiny lines within the swirls and geometric designs, holly berries and veined leaves, ornate tassles and fringes and that sort of thing. I guess that kind of detail sufficed back when counterfeiters actually had to engrave the plates themselves by hand -- just imagine recreating the meticulous web pattern in the outer backround of a one dollar bill (not that anyone would counterfeit a one dollar bill, it's just that it's the only bill I had handy to look at!). But in the age of scanners and laser printers, that tactic no longer works -- it's a relic of our pre-digital past -- so now we see these newfangled colors and other tricky things on our bills.