The real thing...

I saw the other day that the United States Department of the Treasury is warning us to be on the lookout for counterfeit bills that seem to circulate around the holidays. I don't know if they are more prevalent by percentage now, or if the increased spending this time of year just draws more attention to them. I do know if everybody dealt in cash, it would take a lot of paper to furnish enough bills to go around.

I wrote This Story a while back explaining how long it would take to print to print enough money to cover the governments new spending proposals of $3.9 trillion. The point of the story was that each sheet of $100.00 bills contains 32 separate bills. If they print one sheet per second, 24 hours a day, 365 days per year(366 on leap years),it will take about 10 years to print that amount.

You might think that in the spirit of pitching in and helping out, the government would welcome the help from some enterprising individual that would like to help in the production of those bills. After all, it's not like the money the government prints is really backed up by gold or anything other than some government promises.

Just recently, Nevada businessman Robert Kahre found out the government promises about money aren't worth the paper they're printed on. Twenty dollars just ain't what it used to be, I guess.

At any rate, no matter how good you think your copier is, don't be tempted to print money that might fool people into believing it's real.

The government doesn't like the competition.