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7 Dec, 2010 22:43

Fed's bogus bills cause $110 billion problem

Fed's bogus bills cause $110 billion problem

The US Department of the Treasury deployed a massive advertising campaign in the months leading up to the unveiling of the new US $100 bill; however printer errors have now cost billions of dollars.

The bill is said to be one of the most hi-tech pieces of American currency, to stump any counterfeiter. According to a report by CNBC, it looks like it stumped the printers of the money too. 30 percent of the new bills are apparently unusable because of a printing malfunction."I think the real irony here is that they were trying so hard to produce a bill that was too tough to counterfeit and they may have actually produced a bill that's too tough to print at all, by anybody, including the US mint," said Eamon Javers, Washington reporter for CNBC who originally broke the story.The unusable bills cost $120 million to make and are worth $110 billion."A lot of the $120 million that they spent to print these bills will be money down the drain because they'll have to destroy the bogus bills. They basically will have to shred millions of bills," said Javers.In a recession, its government waste that many Americans aren't happy about."That's kind of crazy. It's a waste of money in a sense, especially with everything going on right now. Something needs to be done about it. Who are they holding accountable for it," one Washington man commented.These are the first bills that were supposed to feature US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's signature."Geithner was supposed to be able to frame the first $100 bill with his signature on his wall in February and it looks like he's going to have to wait a very long time to actually see $100 bill with his own signature go into circulation," Javers said.

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