Check out Canada's new money

[SoCalDem]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canadas-new-plastic-banknotes-will-be-nearly-impossible-to-fake/article2068559/


Canada’s new plastic banknotes will be nearly impossible to fake
JEREMY TOROBIN
OTTAWA— From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
Published Monday, Jun. 20, 2011 9:59PM EDT
Last updated Tuesday, Jun. 21, 2011 7:59AM EDT


Canada’s gradual shift to slick, cleaner, synthetic banknotes won’t just mean your money can stand more wear, will not tear and, for the first time, will be recycled into other products instead of destroyed.

The Bank of Canada and the RCMP hope that once the polymer-based notes are in circulation – starting in November with the $100 bill – they’ll also be all but impossible to fake.

snip

Beefed-up security features on the current stock of cotton-paper notes, and an aggressive campaign to train retailers to spot imposters, have helped bring the number of counterfeit bills found each year to 35 per 1 million in circulation, after a rash of fraud between 2001 and 2004 brought that number to a peak of 470 per million bills.

snip

[a la izquierda]

1. I only want to know this:

will there still be hockey players on certain bills?

[Canuckistanian]

2. Don't be ridiculous

Those are Lacrosse players.

[a la izquierda]

3. HAHAHA!

I remember the first time my husband went to Canada on tour. He called me and said "Their money is so damn colorful. Makes ours look vanilla. And they have these loonies and toonies."
That and the orange milk and Tim Horton's makes my husband wish I'd get a job there.

[Canuckistanian]

5. I don't know how you guys deal with all your GREEN bills

Our money is easy to identify just by the color (or colour as we say in Canada).

Somebody can hold up a bill on the other side of the room and we can tell the denomination easily.

And where did you see orange milk?

[a la izquierda]

9. The orange milk was in Oklahoma...

oops. It was Rolo milk.

[happyslug]

10. If Green backs were good enough for Abe Lincoln, it is good enough for us

Yes in 1864 the US Dollar reached its lowest level compared to the Canadian Dollar ($2.78 US Greenback Dollars to one Canadian Dollar in July 1864), but within a few years that had been corrected (and that return to the Gold Standard, was the chief reason for the "Long Depression" of the 1870s, the US Dollar only returned to par with the Canadian Dollar in 1879).

During most of US and Canadian history, dollars were usable on both sides of the Border (Which is one of the Reasons the Canadians ended up adopting the Dollar officially in the 1850s). In many ways the adoption of the Dollar in Canada was the acceptance that if the US ever wanted Canada, Canada would become part of the US (The Confederation of 1867 was done more to reduce any US desire to take Canada then any other single factor).

Anyway, US and Canadian Dollars were almost exchanged one to one till about 1905 when it became illegal to use US Dollars in Canada, even afterward US and Canadian Dollars stayed roughly one to one till the 1960s, when a greater divergence was permitted (Canada Dollars suffered during WWI, but so did the currency of the rest of the World compared to the US Dollar, Canadian dollars dropping to .84 Cents US in 1920, returning to almost par in the 1920s, but falling to .80 cents in 1930 as the great depression kicked in. Canada made the same mistake the US did in 1865, tried to return to the Gold Standard when it would have been better to abandon the gold Standard permanently, as everyone has done since the Great Depression).

More on Canadian Dollars:
More on the Adoption of the Canadian Dollar and the affects of the US Civil War:
http://www.bankofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/1854-1914.pdf

The complete paper that the above article is just one chapter of:
http://www.bankofcanada.ca/publications-research/books-and-monographs/history-canadian-dollar/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_dollar

Yes, the biggest Factor in Canada's use of the Canadian Dollar has been that it is tied in economically with the US. Canada can do things like adopt a dollar coin and drop the Dollar bill (Advocated in the US for decades, but has never been done in the US, but was done decades ago in Canada), plastic money instead of linen paper and other such minor variations, but as to permitting the Canadian Dollar to vary to much from the US Dollar, unacceptable and intolerable. The two Nation-State of Canada and the US are actually in fact one large economic country and has been since before the US Revolution. As such both Nation-States must work in conjunction with the other, and given that the US is that much larger then Canada economically, the US calls the shots and Canada has the right to object, but Canada will NOT oppose anything the US economically does. Both the US and Canada are two Nation-states of the same Economic Country.

[Canuckistanian]

11. Interesting, thanks

I've always noticed that people are wary of changes in their money. We used to have a two-dollar bill for a long time, but I was surprised to learn that the US never had one.

And even in some rural areas in Canada, they considered the $2 bill to be bad luck and wouldn't accept them as change. Weird.

[Chan790]

12. The Federal Reserve does issue US $2 bills.

In fact, the last time they printed them (because nothing is printed constantly) was 2005 and they printed 221,000,000 of them.

The United States two-dollar bill ($2) is a current denomination of US currency. Former President Thomas Jefferson is featured on the obverse of the note. The reverse features an engraved modified reproduction of the painting The Declaration of Independence by John Trumbull.

The bill was discontinued in 1966, but was reintroduced 10 years later as part of the United States Bicentennial celebrations. Today, however it is rarely seen in circulation, and as a result the production of the note is the lowest of U.S. paper money: under 1% of all notes currently produced are $2 bills. This comparative scarcity in circulation, coupled with a lack of public awareness that the bill is still in circulation, has also inspired urban legends and, on a few occasions, created problems for people trying to use the bill to make purchases.

[LetTimmySmoke]

24. After I read your post, I typed in "2 dollar bill" into urbandictionary

I wish I hadn't.

[RC]

14. We do to have $2 dollar bills

I got paid in $2 bills once when I was in the navy because the Navy was making a point with the city of San Diego. The city was flooded with $2 bills starting that evening. I still have a couple.

[nichomachus]

19. That was a common tactic from the military

When they had trouble with the locals. They'd pay everyone in two-dollar bills and then tell merchants to count the two-dollar bills in their tills. Worked every time.

[happyslug]

16. The US has always had a $2 bill, but it was NEVER popular

Various reasons for its unpopularity was given, bad luck was one, that $2 was what the price people were paid to vote for certain candi ates etc. The most logical rationale is that in the Gold Coin System, the US used three gold coins till the adoption of the "Double Eagle" $20 gold piece, when it became one of four gold coins. The Four Gold pieces were the "Double Eagle" a $20 gold piece, the Eagle, a $20 gold coin, the Half Eagle, a $5 Gold Coin and the Quarter Eagle, or $2.50 gold piece (The US has also issued a $1 gold coin, but do to its small size was unpopular).

The $2 Dollar bill was close, but NOT equal to the $2.50 Quarter Eagle. Worse, during the Civil War, the $2 Dollar Bill's value dropped in relationship to Quarter Eagles so that Two Two Dollar Bills almost equaled a Quarter eagle (Face value $2,50 in gold).

Unlike the $5 Dollar, $10 Dollar and $20 Dollar Gold pieces, it was hard to exchange $2.00 Dollars bills for Gold, even when Dollar Bills regained value with Gold by 1879. How do you convert a $2.00 Dollar bill into a Coin, when the smallest gold Coin was $2.50? Remember this is also the days of a Dollar a Day wage, thus that $2.00 dollar bill was hard to convert to a gold coin.

This was made worse by the drop in the value of Silver in proportion to Gold that occurred from the 1860s onward. In the 1850s a Silver Dollar had just a bit less then $1.00 in silver in the coin. By the 1890s the Silver Content remained the same, but its value had dropped to just about 55 Cents in a Dollar Coin (This was the main reason for the "Free Silver" coinage movement in the late 1800s, the US needed inflation to undo the deflation caused by the desire to return to the Gold Standard, printing of Silver Dollars would have lead to that inflation, by 1900 the opening of new Gold Mines in South Africa and Australia had had the effect of introducing the needed inflation, so the Free Silver Movement died).

Anyway, in my opinion, the fact that the older gold coin was $2.50 in value while the newer Two Dollar bill was worth 50 cents less caused all types of problems. In a mostly agricultural society, when payments are generally made after the crop is in (This applied to the farmer when he was paid for his crop AND his workers who were paid for their work for the whole year at the same time, the difference would have been significant (the 1920 Census is the First US Census where the Majority of American lived in Urban Areas, thus in the late 1800s, most Americans lived in Rural America NOT Urban America).

That difference, would have made the $2 dollar bill unpopular, especially in rural America (and by that term I include Rural Canada). The recent move to the $2 dollar coin in Canada reflects the massive inflation both countries have faced over the last 50 years. As a whole inflation is good, it is better then deflation, but one cost of inflation is money slowly becomes less valuable. Thus what you could buy with a 50 cent piece 50 years ago you need a $2 coin today (I remember taking the bus in the late 1960s, it was 25 cents plus a 10 cents transfer, today it is $2.50 for the same trips and a $1 dollar transfer). Thus a $2 dollar coin, like a $1 dollar coin would be popular even in the US, if the US did what Canada and the rest of the World did when a coin replaced a bill, take the bill out of circulation. The US has refused to take the $1 bill out of Circulation so the $1 US Coin remains under used. The same with any $2 coin, it would remain unused as long as the $1 dollar and $2 dollars bills are printed and used.

[JVS]

21. It's popular at race tracks and OTBs.

Because $2 is the minimum bet there.

[JVS]

8. Orange milk?

[sinkingfeeling]

4. Neat!

[SoCalDem]

18. I wish we had done this when we started fiddling with our money

It would make so much more sense and be cheaper too

[marmar]

6. That's worth about $103 USD these days.

nt

[SoCalDem]

7. and it's much prettier too

:)

[Yavin4]

13. Here's One Thing You Won't See on Canadian Money

[SoCalDem]

15. Ouch!.. that's just cruel

:evilgrin:

[pokerfan]

17. Maybe

they can put this on their money:

[nichomachus]

20. Bruins racked up a bar bill

Of $156,000 at the Foxwoods Casino following their victory parade on Saturday.

[Chan790]

22. Well...

It's a utterly respectable bar tab for a few hundred people drinking top-shelf super-premium if you take the $100K bottle of Champagne out of the equation. Mind you, it's the larger portion of that service charge as well...that's the mandated gratuity for large groups (18%) and corking fees, so $18000 of it is the tip on that champagne bottle.

[JBoy]

23. You mean I'll have to light my cigars with something less that a c-note?

And they say the wealthy aren't sacrificing...