[Monty22]

Wow that's a bad design..

[b4its2late]

The "badder" it is, the harder to duplicate......

[jgrubbs]

[el_chupacabra]

I didn't know Beethoven was on the $20?

[VRWCmember]

At least it doesn't have the burning WTC and Pentagon when you fold it anymore.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Jackson fought the establishment of the Federal Reserve tooth and nail. They put his face on the $20 not to honor him but more of a way to rub it in.

[newgeezer]

Why send hits to the enemy sites?

$20 bill gets a facelift
The new banknote, unveiled Tuesday, has different number arrangement and background.
May 13, 2003: 10:59 AM EDT
By Mark Gongloff, CNN/Money staff writer


WASHINGTON (CNN/Money) - The $20 bill got a facelift Tuesday, complete with a new number arrangement and a new background.

The new multicolored bill was introduced at the Treasury Department in Washington.

The department's Bureau of Engraving and Printing showed the bill, which still bears a portrait of Andrew Jackson on the front -- without the old circle -- and has a cluster of small 20s on the lower right-hand corner on the back. The front depicts a faded bald eagle as a background with subtle pink and light blue hues.

The redesigned bill is intended to thwart counterfeiters. The Treasury Department intends to redesign bills every seven to 10 years to keep up with technological advances in counterfeiting.

"The soundness of a nation's currency is essential to the soundness of its economy. And to uphold our currency's soundness, it must be recognized and honored as legal tender and counterfeiting must be effectively thwarted,'' Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said in a ceremony at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

The last redesign of American currency was in 1996, when a new $100 bill was introduced with anti-counterfeiting features such as ink that appeared black from one angle and green from another; a watermark visible only when holding the bill up to the light; and a security strip running vertically through the bill -- features that will remain in the newest currency.

Other currencies with similar features followed -- a new $50 bill in 1997, a new $20 bill in 1998 and new $5 and $10 notes in 2000.

The bill will go into circulation in the fall, and others will be redesigned in the next few years. One- and two-dollar bills will not be redesigned.

In the meantime, the Treasury Department is working with companies in the vending, gaming and public transportation industries to help them adjust their currency-reading devices to accept the new bills.

Treasury has given these companies material they can use to update bill-acceptance devices, but nothing they can spend or use to make counterfeit bills.

But some currency experts warned that the new features likely will do little to discourage counterfeiters.

"Everything they've done before has been superseded by better counterfeiters," said Dennis Forgue, an anti-counterfeiting expert at Harlan J. Berk Ltd., a numismatic firm in Chicago. "With the effectiveness of computer-generated images these days, they can make some pretty nice counterfeits pretty quickly."

Of all the counterfeit bills in circulation, about 40 percent are produced digitally, according to the Secret Service, which was established in 1865 to fight counterfeiting.

Forgue said some counterfeiters are able to bleach the ink out of newer bills of smaller denominations, leaving just the unique currency paper and the watermark, and then print the features of a higher-denominated bill on the blank paper.

"The ones I've seen have been not that great in quality, but can pass in a lot of places," said Forgue, who doubted the features of the new bill would do anything to discourage people from this process, called "leaching."  

[b4its2late]

Front:

[The Old Hoosier]

It sucks. I want my greenbacks back.

[hobbes1]

Now, like you said, we just need to replace Andy J with Ronald Reagan.

Everytime a lib uses a cash machine...

[prairiebreeze]

I suppose it's good that it's harder to copy.

Still...I'll sell you Boardwalk and Park Place....

Prairie

[Xenalyte]

Andrew Jackson still looks hagged out.

[jriemer]

Now President Jackson on the $20 bill looks even more like Keith Richards...

[fish hawk]

They should put the $10 on the twenty dollar bill. That would be the true value after taxes.

[Cyber Liberty]

It looks...."third-world" to me.

[cgk]

It's just a matter of time before there is a move to remove Jackson from the face of the $20 bill by the bullies who don't want us to remember our own history. After all, he was a slave owner, and the 16th President of the "Confederacy of the United States." No matter that he formed the group that later became the Democratic Party.

[FReepaholic]

Didn't we just go through a re-design recently?

How much is THIS ONE gonna cost?

[Hank Rearden]

We've still got the most boring money in the world.

And if all the old designs are still legal tender, why wouldn't counterfeiters just copy those instead? Artificially "aging" new copies of old designs is simple.

[Conservative til I die]

OK, folks, I'm gonna do what I do on every coin/paper money thread on FR, regardless of whether I like or don't like the design of the money is post pics of beautiful money from our nation's past. So here goes, and note, these were all validly circulating bills. Not all were Federal Reserve notes, but they were all considered money, not checks, not bonds, or any other monetary instrument:

1899 $1 Silver Certificate,


$1899 $5 Silver Certificate, "The Chief"


1901 $10 Legal Tender, "Bison Note"


1934 $5000 Federal Reserve Note, specimen (although these notes did circulate)


1934 $10,000 Federal Reserve Note, specimen (although these notes did circulate)


1896 $1 Silver Certificate, "Educational Note"


1928 $1 Silver Certificate, "Funny Back" (Interesting note: Up until 1963, the only $1 bills that circulated were either these notes, the blue seal silver certificates, although with a slightly different design, and the almost identically designed, but much less seen red seal Legal Tenders. The $1 bills that we see now are a historical novelty, as anyone born in the 1940s or early 50's can tell you):

[Centurion2000]

I think the new design SUCKS ..... of course it almost looks like the powers that be are going to keep re-engineering the images until people lose faith in what a $20.00 bill looks like.

It LOOKS fake, so people won't have faith in it.

[bmwcyle]

The new money was first refered to as "cut and paste" designed.