Free Republic

At least $1 billion in cash has been smuggled into Iran as it seeks to avoid Western sanctions, a bigger figure than previously reported, Iranian officials and Western intelligence and diplomatic sources say. Sanctions imposed by the West over Iran’s nuclear program have shut Tehran out of the global banking system, making it hard to obtain the U.S. dollars it needs for international transactions. In December, the U.S. Treasury said the Iranian government had obtained hundreds of millions of dollars in bank notes using front companies. Interviews by Reuters with Iranian officials and Western diplomatic and intelligence sources show a...

1. 1.5 billion - the number of £20 notes (worth £30 billion) in circulation, of which an estimated 150 million (worth £3 billion) are Elgar notes.

Somebody was asking what we can do to stop this socialist/Marxist assault on America. I say plenty! Here's one strategy employed by Iranian freedom movement, that we can use as well. I'll sure give it a try. You can get rubber stamps online for less than $10. And I'm talking about a "Velvet" revolution, where people will eventually go en-mass to the streets and demand restoration of the Republic. Any suggestions as to what we could put on our money?

Clearing out your home can uncover all sorts of trinkets long forgotten, but for one resident of the Yorkshire Dales it led to the discovery of six genuine treasures he never knew he had. And now the rare Australian banknotes hiding under the lining paper of his chest of drawers have fetched a staggering £410,490 at auction. The elderly owner in his 80s, who wants to remain anonymous, was due to move into a retirement home and called in his local auctioneers to go through the house and see what they could sell for him. Rodney Tennant, of Tennant's Auctioneers,...

Flu could hitch a ride on banknotes 16:02 22 June 2007 NewScientist.com news service Debora MacKenzie, Toronto The flu virus persists so well on banknotes that money could help spread the next pandemic, researchers say. Yves Thomas and colleagues at the University Hospitals of Geneva in Switzerland dripped various strains of flu virus – including some that were circulating during winter 2007 – onto Swiss banknotes and left them at room temperature for varying amounts of time before testing for live virus. "We wanted to assess the survival of human flu on banknotes, knowing that billions of them are exchanged...

The Bank of Korea will finally issue new large-denomination banknotes in the first half of 2009, it said Wednesday, ending decades when the highest demomination has been W10,000 (approximately US$10). "The current highest denomination is too low compared to the income and price level, and is causing inconvenience," BOK governor Lee Seong-tae said at a press conference. "Since 1973, when the circulation of W10,000 bills began, commodity prices have grown 12-fold and the gross national income has become 150 times larger, but the highest denomination had been preserved for 34 years.” Discussions with the Ministry of Finance and Economy, the...

Billions of dollars worth of new, hard-to- counterfeit Iraqi dinar bank notes are now officially in circulation throughout the country, the Coalition Provisional Authority reported today. The new money became the official currency of Iraq Jan. 15 after a three-month exchange period that also has involved the destruction of tons of Saddam Hussein-era notes, according to a joint CPA-Central Bank of Iraq news release. "The new dinar is a real improvement over the old," Ahmed Salman Jaburi, deputy governor of Iraq's Central Bank, asserted in the news release. Because the new money has security features that make it hard to...

British banknote maker boosted Geoff Gibbs Saturday September 20, 2003 The Guardian De La Rue, the world's largest commercial security printer, is heading for an unexpectedly large first half profit after beating the deadline to produce new banknotes for Iraq. The British firm was awarded the contract to print the new Iraqi dinar by the coalition provisional authority in July, when it was given a target issuance date of October. But De La Rue, which is involved in the production of national currencies for more than 150 countries, disclosed yesterday that deliveries of the new notes have already begun. Further...

China quarantines banknotes in SARS scare April 29 2003 at 11:39AM Beijing - China's banks have quarantined all banknotes for 24 hours and are encouraging the use of bank cards in an attempt to halt the spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), state media said on Tuesday. The procedure was introduced despite medical experts saying there was "no clear evidence" that SARS could be spread via banknotes, the China Daily newspaper reported. "When suspicious banknotes come back in, we first sterilise them with disinfectant, and expose them under ultraviolet light for four hours," an Industrial and Commercial Bank of...