The Money Factory

Or the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Today was somewhat of a rich day. I held four thousand dollars in banknotes ... in one dollar denomination. If the brick, the name they give that many notes, was made of 100 dollar notes, I would be holding, well you do the math, but soon enough you figure that places like these better have good security. And they do; the temptation is high. Hell, I was tempted. Employees have these humourous signs saying:
"In the last few minutes, I just printed my lifetime earnings." And literally, they did. How depressing!

The National Academies are doing a study on technologies to stay ahead of counterfeiters. The task asks that the committee comes up with future threats, and with technologies that could be incorporated in the banknotes. Funnily enough, they wouldn't tell us what was in the bill. The secret service is in charge of protecting the banknote; we were briefed by them, but since the meeting was open to the public (National Geographic and Nature came along), they wouldn't tell us what people are not meant to know. They will in a later meeting, closed to the public.

Still walking around the production floor, and talking the the workers, I learned a lot more than they officially wanted us to know. I won't write it down here because Americans are a little crazy when it comes to security. Someone that shouln't may read this.

The Secret Service told us about counterfeiting. Interestingly, counterfeiting has moved from big presses in secret locations, to the home; that's right, the home, yours or mine. Go buy some paper with cotton in it, scan the note, print it x times and there you go, you have a crude banknote that works pretty often. And all this on your home computer, and your all in one system. This type of counterfeiting is growing simply because the opportunity is there.

I learned much more, but I won't put it in here; it can make great dinner conversation.

I'll leave you with a very interesting thread from horizons unlimited. This thread asks people how they can afford their trips. Well, most can't but they do anyway, and they tell you why:
http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000409.html