No Ordinary Counterfeit [North Korean $100 Bills]

The New York Times ^ | July 23, 2006 | By STEPHEN MIHM

[aculeus]

On Oct. 2, 2004, the container ship Ever Unique, sailing under a Panamanian flag from Yantai, China, berthed in the Port of Newark. [snip] ... F.B.I. and Secret Service agents, acting as part of a sting operation, gathered around the container and cracked it open ... they found counterfeit $100 bills worth more than $300,000, secreted in false-bottomed compartments.

The counterfeits were nearly flawless. They featured the same high-tech color-shifting ink as genuine American bills and were printed on paper with the same precise composition of fibers. The engraved images were, if anything, finer than those produced by the United States Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

Counterfeits of this superior sort — known as supernotes — had been detected by law-enforcement officials before, elsewhere in the world, but the Newark shipment marked their first known appearance in the United States, at least in such large quantities.

[snip]

The arrests also prompted a more momentous accusation. After the indictments were released, U.S. government and law-enforcement officials began to say in public something that they had long said in private: the counterfeits were being manufactured not by small-time crooks or even sophisticated criminal cartels but by the government of North Korea. “The North Koreans have denied that they are engaged in the distribution and manufacture of counterfeits, but the evidence is overwhelming that they are,”

[snip]

The counterfeiting of American currency by North Korea might seem, to some [like the New York Times? -ed], to be a minor provocation by that country’s standards.

[snip]

But several current and former Bush administration officials whom I spoke with several months ago maintain that the counterfeiting is in important ways a comparable outrage. ... counterfeits, by creating mistrust in the American currency, posed a “threat to the American people.”

[stephenjohnbanker]

HA!!!!

[Polybius]

I would remind all (FReepers) and sundry (administration members who lurk on FR) that counterfeiting another country's currency is an act of war.

For your own personal declaration of war against North Korea, print the following images on your color copier and glue them back to back.

[Das Outsider]

Then we distribute them say - in Venezuela or Iran, in such a way it looks like Kim is circulating them.



Hey, dass good idea! Maybe Kim do honeymoon in Bennizwayruh. Ees ezotic, fun, you know? Kim hab tok wit wife.

[Dosa26]

That ain't even got a hard overlay. It should print perfectly.

[Irish_Thatcherite]

Kim and Hugo make a lovely couple...

[rawcatslyentist]

It's always amusing to note the Flag in the corner and ask the judge if this is a Military Tribunal, or a civilian Court...<<

That was on a King of the Hill episode where Dale and Hank were using crack for fish bait!

[bmwcyle]

Yes it is.

[Bommer]

I would remind all (FReepers) and sundry (administration members who lurk on FR) that counterfeiting another country's currency is an act of war.

Only if you have a Preesident with balls to go after them.....and we don't!

[Malsua]

Seems to me that a suitable response to this would be to print about 100 trillion in NK currency, large bills and air drop them from 40k feet over the country.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

Drop them on top of the next TPD-2, as soon as it's set up on the pad.

(thump)

[ccmay]

Seems like a pretty small-time shipment to be a government operation. They could just as easily have shipped $3M or $300M.

This shows the wisdom of keeping bank note denominations relatively small. The Europeans have a 500-euro note that is worth about $600, and therefore six times easier to smuggle than the same amount in Benjy's.

-ccm

[ccmay]

We wouldn't have this problem if we quit using imaginary money..........

Gold-backed notes are no more difficult to counterfeit than fiat money. Or are you saying we should all be carrying gold coins around?

[Armigerous]

heh, yea it is...some years ago I had a business partner who was with the Board of Economic Warfare in WW2....his job was to go around to farmers in the southern US and actually encourage and pay them to grow acres of kudzu vine...arguably the worst plant in the history of the world.....as it happens, kudzu plant fibers were the stuff from which Japanese currency was made and we printed gazillions of counterfeit Yen and airdropped them all throughout China and the Far East....I always thought that would still be an effective weapon of war under the right circumstances

[panaxanax]

"We wouldn't have this problem if we quit using imaginary money.........."

Be careful what you wish for, festus. It would be nice to go back on the gold standard, but that will never happen.

The next step will be a "cashless system" enacted under the promise that it will be for our own good. Our "money" will be nothing more than a number or "points" in a computer. One slip by some affirmative action employee and you're dead broke.

I prefer the "brass, copper, lead and powder" system myself.

[VOA]

bump

[null and void]

*shrug* you and I have different ideas of what's amusing...

[xarmydog]

Be an innocent law abiding citizen,and inadvertantly pass one at the mall.The SS would ruin your day,if not your life!

[M-cubed]

Yen and airdropped them all throughout China and the Far East....I always thought that would still be an effective weapon of war under the right circumstances<<

I just hope we haven't met the enemy ...and the enemy is US!

[rahbert]

gold would wear out our pockets faster..

[M-cubed]

It would be nice to go back on the gold standard, but that will never happen. <<

nope!..that would create economic freedom for the country that did it first!!!!!! >> http://www.321gold.com/fed/greenspan/1966.html